LETTER: Rye Needs to Move Forward on Artificial Turf

In an open letter to Rye City Council, the former head of the Rye City Democratic Committee Meg Cameron (and former State Assembly and City Council candidate) calls on the city council to move ahead with the artificial turf plan for Nursery Field. Cameron also spoke at the last council meeting on February 28th – see the video below.

To the City Council and Staff,

People ask why I care about the Nursery Field issue, even though my children are long grown. I care as a taxpayer who expects fiscal responsibility. And I care as someone who loves Rye and wants it to be as family friendly as it was when my husband and I moved here with our first child, who was three years old, in 1985. I don’t mean things should stay the way they were back then. Times change, and so have our expectations. Rye needs to move forward.

Back then my husband had a state-of-the-art record player and a Rolodex. I was the proud owner of a home computer. This was a beige box that connected to the internet through a landline, which meant no one in a household could make a phone call while someone was using the internet. Now I have an iPhone with ten million times as much memory as my first computer. We take astonishing technology for granted: smart watches, streaming entertainment, and online just-about-everything. We got along without these miracles for most of human history, but that’s no reason to reject them now that they’re available.

Same goes for using technology to make a soggy playing field more usable, more attractive, and – by reducing fertilizer runoff and greenhouse gas emissions – more environmentally neutral. What clinches the argument to proceed is that Rye would receive the field upgrade as a multi-million-dollar gift.

To reject this opportunity would be outrageous. It’s not just parents and coaches who would be outraged. It would be a major slap in the face to:

• Homeowners, since recreational opportunities are a factor in home values.
• Rye taxpayers, who demand and deserve fiscal responsibility.
• Anyone who hates to see a small not-in-my-backyard group dictate policy.
• Voters who learn that an elected official who lives less than a thousand feet from Nursery Field put his own interests above theirs.

Three years ago, I rang doorbells and asked people to vote for a slate of candidates that included Josh Nathan. I gave people Nathan’s palm card. I told them about his service on the School Board. I’m mortified to see him favoring his own interest over the interests of the people I urged to vote for him.

I call on Josh Nathan and the rest of the City Council to lift the pause at the March 6 meeting. And then get to work! Finish the artificial turf plan and send it out to bid.

Meg Cameron, Martin Butler Court

Also watch Cameron speak about the issue at the February 28, 2024 Rye City Council meeting: