PAVES (Paid and Volunteer Employment Service), a nonprofit corporation which has served the youth and residents of Garden City since 1967, is closing. For those not familiar with the service, PAVES has provided a list, updated in the spring and fall, of high school and college students from the village able to do various tasks for residents who called PAVES' telephone message recorder.

Residents then called a person on the list and contracted directly with him or her to do the task at hand, such as snow shoveling during the winter. In PAVES' earlier years, the corporation also staffed a summer office at the Cathedral House with adult volunteers who matched called-in requests with available young workers. The Garden City Community Fund provided the nonprofit's modest budget and Kay Kirby, one of the founders, oversaw the daily work for many years until she moved from Garden City to Texas.

"As with all volunteer organizations, it has been increasingly difficult to find persons in the village with the time and interest to do the work involved to provide the service," Bill Bellmer, PAVES treasurer, noted. "But the principal problem has become the possibility of lawsuits, however frivolous, faced by adult volunteers, as evidenced by an incident in the village in the recent past." Although liability insurance is available for such occasions, Bellmer added, it is expensive and still does not solve the problem of the time and effort required for a defense.

The village's Recreation Commission was contacted last fall to request the continuation of the service under their auspices so that adult volunteers could work anonymously. After three months of consideration, the village has determined that providing services would be too much of a risk, as it is more in the nature of a "one-on-one" situation - with possible litigants noting the village's "deep pockets," Bellmer further noted. The school administration was also contacted, but they do not want to get involved with what they perceive as a private function.

"We trust that PAVES has been useful to the village over the years and hope the day will come when organizations such as ours are once again possible," Bellmer concluded.