A frustrated Bob Davis wants answers. Answers about the "process" which the Garden City board of trustees will take to make a final call on the future of St. Paul's. "About five months ago I stood in the same place and asked a question of you - what is the process in which you were going to go through to make a final decision on St. Paul's?" the Third Street resident said at the Oct. 2 trustees meeting.

"I'd like to know as I think the citizenry would like to know. Do you intend to have presentations for the POAs? Do you intend to have presentations for the community at large?" he asked.

Although he said the recent issuance of a Request For Information (RFI) is a "positive step" forward, Davis still believes that the process the board often speaks of is "piecemeal, uncoordinated and doesn't seem to be well thought out.

"What is the timetable? And do you intend to adhere to that timetable?" he asked.

Village officials printed the RFI as a legal notice in the village's official newspaper; they also contacted the Long Island Association of Developers and sent RFI packages to 20 different developers well known around the area. The deadline for RFI responses is no later than Oct. 31. Prospective responders were urged to attend a walk-through inspection of the premises Wednesday morning, Oct. 8.

Village officials intend to review all submissions made in response to this RFI and compare each with another and with other proposals and ideas for development. The village may, at its discretion, undertake further discussion with some or all of the responders, reject all submitted responses and/or entertain ideas and proposals submitted other than in response to this RFI.

A confused Davis then asked, "We're having a public forum on Oct. 22 yet we won't have the information back from the RFI until Oct. 31?

"I'm sorry to belabor the issue, but after eight years of being involved in this, I think we're all owed a little better answer. So I respectfully request that the trustees, collectively, find an answer - not to me but to the community - that's more satisfactory, given the time constraints ahead of us and the eight years behind us," he said.

Fellow resident Dorothy Episcopia, who said Davis' points are well taken, criticized the board for putting out an RFI with a 30 or 31-day deadline. "It's just not enough time. Thirty days is really insufficient to get the kind of information these questions are looking for and that may really help us. The only thing it may help do is say we should have no possibility of this. And that's my concern because it's a lot easier to go forward with municipal use," she said. "And that might really be a disservice to this village, I don't know. I don't think any of us really know because that area has not been adequately explored."

Episcopia also believes that the lack of regularly published informative information to keep the situation straight in people's minds makes the possibility at any attempt to go to the state legislature for home rule legislation (if the board opts to move forward with private use) that much more difficult because of the tremendous education process people have to go through. "That is the fall, collectively, of the village board and everybody over the last 10 years," she said.

Mayor Barbara Miller, who said the board "really talked about the process this past summer," said a public forum on St. Paul's is planned for Wednesday evening, Oct. 22 in the Garden City High School's auditorium. At press time, officials could not determine when the meeting would begin. The options that the Trustees Committee on St. Paul's researched, as well as additional information the board hopes to receive from Einhorn Yaffee Prescott (EYP) on threshold use and stabilization will be discussed.

Formed back in December, the Trustees Committee on St. Paul's rendered a report to the board May 30. "Two versions [of that report] came out of that committee. Over the summer we were unable to make a decision about which version was going out [to the public]... I think we're getting there and I hope to make a decision [regarding that report] by the end of the fall," Mayor Miller said, adding that it's been difficult to get a full consensus since there wasn't a full board in attendance during the summer meetings. Further, Trustees John Watras and John Mauk did not attend the Oct. 2 meeting.

Certainly hoping a decision will be reached before winter arrives, Mayor Miller said there's quite a bit of material to be mulled over, from her perspective. "I think that we'll need more than one forum," she told Davis.