Letter to the editor
To the editor:
As you and some of your reporters are aware the attendance at the monthly Twin Rivers Homeowners Association open board meetings is to say the least pitiful. Generally speaking, six to 10 people show up for the meetings. As a matter of fact at the last board meeting of the 10 or 11 people who were in attendance one was a non-resident politician (who was waiting to speak to the board president), one person was from your paper and one was the husband of the administrator.
I believe that there are several things we must do to increase attendance and participation at board meetings.
My first suggestion is to change the starting time of the meetings from 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. to allow people who commute from New York extra time to get there. As a matter of fact, when the board wants to attract more people to its special meetings they change the starting time to 8 p.m.
I would strongly suggest that we televise the meetings on the Comcast community access channel. Comcast has already offered us the equipment and the time at no charge. This way people who would like to attend, but might not be able to attend the meetings, might be able to watch the meetings or tape the meetings on their VCRs.
To make the meetings interesting I think that the board members should be obliged to answer any questions directly asked of them instead of the board president answering on their behalf. This will enable a lot of viewers to decide which board members are full of integrity and which board members are full of something else and to also have the information necessary for them to make intelligent decisions.
Another suggestion is to send the Tin Rivers newspaper to all of the members who do not live in Twin Rivers and should be receiving the paper, but don’t because the board does not want those people to have an idea as to how their monies are being spent. I believe that under the Open Public Meetings Act all the members have to be notified of the meeting times. Although the editor of Twin Rivers Today has previously stated in a letter to the Herald that Twin Rivers Today is indeed mailed to all of the members, it is still not mailed to at least 300 homeowners. I think Mr. Bush should be encouraged to explain why he has deliberately mislead the Herald about this.
Al Wally
East Windsor