By Lee Ross
Mountain View Telegraph
Two girls, ages 13 and 15, waited through three hours of an Edgewood Town Council meeting to tell councilors about what they said was an injustice.
Aleacia Linsley, a home-schooled ninth-grader from Edgewood, and her foster-sister, Moriarty High School eighth-grader Felisha Armstrong, took the podium at the Aug. 6 meeting to talk about their $20 donation to Wildlife West Nature Park.
"I feel that it is sad that a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old can go out and get donations and the town can't live up to its promise," Aleacia said.
Aleacia said she and her foster-sister had overheard their parents talking about $20,000 that was budgeted for the town to contribute to the park to help pay for the annual music festival. There was no contract binding the town to do so and, after a change in administration in the last election, the money was taken out of the budget.
"Felisha and I do promise that we're going to give it to them (Wildlife West) and we're not going to take it back," Aleacia said.
The comment was met with applause from the audience.
"I always teach my girls you speak your mind," said Kelly Krauth, Aleacia's mother and Felisha's foster-mother.
Donations and fundraisers from the community and businesses brought in $13,000. Combined with the money taken for the event at the gate for more than 1,300 attendees paying up to $15 a head, the event broke even, according to the park's founder Roger Alink.
It's important to note that the town contributed $2,000 to advertise the event and several town councilors contributed to a raffle and a yard sale to help raise money for the event. For example, Councilor Glenn Felton donated bicycles and Councilor Rita-Loy Simmons made a contribution from her corral: 500 pounds of "beef on the hoof," as she called it.
There were other pressing matters on the 23-item council agenda that made the more than four hour meeting run to almost 11 p.m., and caused tempers to rise.
"It's late and I'm running out of patience," Mayor Robert Stearley said after an argument with Councilor Brad Hill.
At issue was finding a new location for the library, which was adopted as a department of the town at the meeting.
Stearley said there may be a lease available in a space in the shopping center on the corner of Dinkle Road and N.M. 344.
Hill said if the town is going to spend substantial money on renovating a space it should also retrofit the building to be energy efficient, a measure he estimated may nearly double the cost of a $50,000 renovation.
Hill is the executive director of the Foundation for Building and an advocate for environmentally conscious building practices.
Stearley said he didn't want to make a decision on whether the town should go green on this and future endeavors just then. He said the town may be waiting 10 years to find a suitable location for the library if they didn't decide to move forward that night.
"To tie the property for a couple of weeks is all I'm asking for," Stearley said.
Councilor Glenn Felton made a motion to empower the mayor to hold the property for less than a month, provided the town attorney gave the contract a favorable review. That contract was not available for the council to review at the time, and at one point Felton also mentioned that the council had to review the contract as well.
"I've never heard a real estate contract so vague," Hill said before the council voted on the motion. "I don't think what we're voting for means anything."
Councilors John Abrams and Felton voted in favor of the motion and Simmons and Hill voted against. The tie was broken by Stearley, who voted in favor of the motion.
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