I have been attending village board meetings for more years than I care to remember. When the village purchased the St. Paul's campus, my hopes and dreams were that village hall would be moved into the St. Paul's building. Several years ago, trustees looked at relocating village hall to St. Paul's and the figure then was around $38 million. Members of that board decided in its wisdom that it shouldn't burden the taxpayers with that move.

I was fortunate to have been in attendance at the Estates Property Owners' Association meeting when trustee John Mauk made his presentation of the six options for the future use of the St. Paul's building. I applaud him for his objective and honest presentation of the advantages and disadvantages of each of the six options.

The facts and figures trustee Mauk gave at that meeting are facts that every resident in Garden City deserved to receive from the board of trustees when it put together the long awaited Village Facts regarding St. Paul's. I believe it was a disservice to the community when it was decided not to include all the information to the residents.

I was in attendance at the public meeting held Nov. 13 by the village trustees to discuss the options for St. Paul's. Five of the options were presented in an abbreviated form; the option to move the present library into St. Paul's was the real focus of the meeting. Keep in mind, the St. Paul's building has 123,000 square feet of space.

The experts presented a plan to use 50,000 square feet of St. Paul's for the library, using firewalls to separate the library from more than half of the building that will remain vacant. The estimated cost printed in Village Facts was $26.6 million. Then they said, "Add another $1.1 million to demolish Ellis Hall and the cottages." We all know that figure will go still higher before the actual figures are presented for bonding the project.

In the Sept. 28 issue of The New York Times, there was an article about college dorms. Adelphi University's new residence hall was featured. I found it very interesting that the new residence hall is a 60,180 square foot building and cost $14.5 million to build. This is half the cost of moving the library into the St. Paul's building and using less space. If the library needs more room, it would be far less expensive to add on to the present building.

At this same hearing, proponents to move the library into the St. Paul's building kept referring to community rooms and senior citizens activities (to replace the senior citizen center). When questioned, experts said that the $26.6 million figure quoted is only for the library and did not include the latter two components.

Moving the library into St. Paul's is one way of saving the historic St. Paul's building; but it is not the only way.

It seems to me that we should not be looking to spend these millions of taxpayer dollars to move our library into the St. Paul's building, particularly at a time when the new reassessment has shifted the school tax burden upwards on Class 1 - residential homes - from 63 percent to eventually reach 83 percent. All other classes have shifted downward. The law only allows this to go up a maximum of 5 percent a year and it only went up about two percent this year. It will be going up every year until it maxes out at the 83 percent.

Village hall is not in compliance with the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] law and this must be dealt with. The police department, as well as other departments, needs more room. We are looking at a minimum of $6 million plus to do this. This must be done.

The middle school field (about 11 acres) must be purchased. There is a 50-year lease on it, which runs out in 2006. We will be looking at a bond issue for this - more millions of dollars. This must be done.

The trustees have approved a $1.75 million bond to move and repair a house from one lot to another to create more parking in Field 10. This was approved.

After examining the pros and cons of each of the options, I believe there are only two options we should be considering. We should seek home rule legislation to enable this village to seek private use for St. Paul's. Let the private user pay for the historical building, while we, the residents, can continue to see it without having to foot the bill for it - a "forever" bill - because even when the bond is paid off, we are still going to pay to maintain a half-empty 120-year-old building.

The other option is demolition - something I don't want and I don't think most residents want.

Jerie Newman