School Officials: Field Flap Was Key to Hastings Bond Defeat

By Tom Bartley

The million-dollar, artificial-turf resurfacing of Hastings High School’s Reynolds Field—controversial centerpiece of an $8.1 million capital-improvement bond—was the key reason for the proposal’s resounding defeat, exit polling suggests.

School Superintendent Roy Montesano presented the poll results at a meeting of the Hastings-on-Hudson school board Wednesday (see full presentation here).

Residents last month rejected the $8.6 million project, which earmarked borrowed money and some cash reserves to finance repairs, replacements and upgrades at all three district schools. The bond went down, 1,595 to 1,060, in a vote Oct. 22 in Cochran gym.

The survey, conducted as voters left the gym, drew responses from 1,279 of them. That 48 percent, representing those who had voted for and against the bond, overwhelmingly backed every one of the proposed projects except the $1.3 million resurfacing of the high school’s principal athletic field. On that question, only 45 percent of the respondents said they favored the turf-field while 55 percent opposed it.

Among other highlights of the survey were these:

• Cost was clearly a factor in the voting. On a scale of 1 to 5, with No. 5 meaning cost was the primary reason for their vote, 63 percent of the respondents chose either No. 3 (28 percent) or higher.   

The school board was expected to take the survey into consideration in deciding whether to resubmit the bond and in what form. It cannot do that for 90 days after the vote, or Jan. 20, at the earliest.

Meanwhile, suggested Norbert Sander, “It’s time to put a lot of this acrimony aside and find a way forward...We have to live next to each other.” He pressed the board to replace the high school’s worn, nonstandard track with the kind of regulation, six-lane high school track that neighboring districts enjoy.

Sander portrayed track and field as a school’s most democratic sports institution. “Track is for everyone,” he said. “You can find a place as a shotputter, as a sprinter, as a long-distance runner. There’s a place for everyone; everyone gets to play.”

Some residents urged the board not to focus exclusively on the exit poll. Insisting the survey “needs to be put in a certain perspective,” David Skolnik said, “I think it needs to be taken with some degree of context.”

While the poll was objective, Skolnik, who opposed the field plan, told board members Wednesday, “You need to understand that nothing definitive really can be drawn [from the survey]...I think you need to exercise some caution.”

Later, his wife, Vicky Gould, went even further, suggesting that board members would “be surprised if they’re going to rely on the exit poll, and assume that this group that’s been opposing them is just going to go away. We’re not just going to go away.”

In an interview outside the school, she called the poll incomplete and not a scientific survey of that day’s voters. Gould noted, for example, that “no one was asked, ‘Would you prefer to have this whole facility at the Burke estate?“ That property, once owned by the actress Billie Burke and bought by the school district in 1967, has been home to other athletic fields but Reynolds has remained the site of heaviest use, including home football games.

Peter Callahan, in his remarks to the board, also looked to Burke, calling it “the beginning of a great sport facility.”   

“Put the track there, put any of the stuff there,” he said. “I just don’t think Reynolds Field is the place for any of this.”

While some speakers thanked the board for its hard work in bringing the referendum to a vote, none did so with the enthusiasm of a handful of senior athletes. Captains and co-captains of their teams, they were led to the lectern by the soccer squad’s Lee Owen, who thanked the board for its efforts on behalf of the athletic fields. “We know it was a lot of hard work,” he said before presenting a Thank You card to Board President Eileen Baecher. Fellow seniors and sports leaders Francesco Scioscia, Jamie Katz, Tim Spencer and Devin Nunez joined him in the tribute.