Rockville Centre Letters to the Editor

Eviction is the right word

To the Editor:

As a concerned member of the Rockville Centre community, I have to strongly disagree with last week’s Letter to the Editor written by Lester Schad (“Sensationalizing the issue”).

I have to commend the Herald for printing both sides of the “St. Mark’s Eviction” in your newspaper. Unfortunately, Mr. Schad was not properly informed of the events leading up to the eviction of the nursery school. The word “eviction” is an action by a landlord that compels a tenant to leave the premises. This is exactly what St. Mark’s church did to the nursery school.

Mr. Schad made comments about the school’s lease, but he was not properly informed by his congregation that the church does not give leases to any of its tenants. The rent paid to the church for use of their building is noted as a donation to the church. The nursery school tried for years to get a lease, but was unsuccessful.

Once again, the school is licensed by the State of New York and has many restrictions regarding space for the children. The issue here was not the space, but more a personality conflict with those running the church office. The church used the space constraints for the new playground as an excuse to evict the school.

Did Mr. Schad attend the town meeting at the recreation center on Feb. 12? The letter of eviction was read to the audience. Unfortunately, not one church member or member of the St. Mark’s Church Board of Trustees attended that meeting. The concerned members of the community who attended the meeting wanted to hear from the church as well as the nursery school. If the church was the victim in this unfortunate situation, why wasn’t anyone there to defend its good name?

You can use other terminology for what has happened, but plain and simple, the church evicted the nursery school.

Jeannie King

Rockville Centre

Darkness makes Merrick look seedy

To the Editor:

As soon as I saw the headline and the picture on the front page, I knew the section of our town that the writer was referring to (“Left in the dark,” Feb. 26-March 4).