Local Officials and Residents Gather for Community Conversation at Rye Town Park

Rain failed to put a damper on the first ever Rye Town Park Community Conversation meeting Saturday, as residents and local officials discussed ways to make Rye Town less of a parking lot and more of a park that residents can safely enjoy.

The Commission, which includes Rye Town Supervisor Joseph Carvin, Rye City Mayor Doug French, Rye Brook Mayor Joan Feinstein, Port Chester Mayor Dennis Pilla, and two commissioners, engineer Benedict Salanitro and Rye City Council member Joseph Sack, met with residents during a nearly two-hour meeting that took place in one of the pavilions facing Oakland Beach in the park itself. Differential pricing for residents and non-residents once again was a major theme –an issue the Rye Town Park Commission said it would implement at its next meeting April 28 at Rye Town Hall in Port Chester at 6 p.m.

But before the Commission came up with the final figures for that pricing, it also discussed a reduction in the number of cars allowed to park at Rye Town and the implementation of new safety procedures. The Commission said all of these measures are givens now, but said the event on Saturday was necessary because it wanted to hear from the community one last time.

Saturday's meeting in the park was an outgrowth of similar community meetings that had taken place in individual homes in Rye and at previous commission meetings during the past year. 

More than 150 area residents came to voice their concerns to the Commission, essentially saying: "We want our park and beach back."

Their emphasis was on the "our," that "our" constituting the estimated 60,000 residents of Rye City, Port Chester, Rye Brook and Rye Neck who make up the constituency that pays the taxes that support the park.

Their reasons ranged from safety and protecting the environment to protesting the fact that Rye City and Rye Town citizens split the taxes that support the park, in effect subsidizing the more than 50 to 70 percent of non-area residents who use the facilities during the peak summer season.

"That's not our park, even a 'guesstimate' of 50 to 70 percent use by outsiders means its their park, not ours," said a Rye City resident who lives on Bird Lane. "We just foot the bill for them."

He was one of the residents who brought up subjects ranging from a recent Rye Town Park police bust that resulted in the arrest of around 20 people abusing beach privileges late at night to the possibility of licensing dogs for dog runs or a dog park area as a revenue producer for the money-losing park, which had a $90,000 deficit last year.

Rye Town Supervisor Joseph Carvin said that parking is an important part of the park's revenue, but said the Commission was already in favor of differential pricing for residents and non-residents, reducing the number of cars that are allowed to park on the lawn, and resolving safety, environmental and ecological issues.

"It's just a matter of fine tuning now, and there may be glitches at the outset, but the new pricing, parking restrictions and rulings will go into effect by the start of the season this year," he said. "The Commission is in agreement that this is going to happen."

Both French and Feinstein stressed that the decisions concerning this season would be a first step with an eye towards further improvements in the years to come.

Many of those suggested improvements had come from the Concerned Citizens for an Improved Rye Town Park and the Ad Hoc Rye Town Park Parking Committee, with Rye City residents Caroline Walker and Kristina Bicher, former president of the Rye Historical Society, prime movers behind those organizations.

Those groups had previously suggested changes revolving around differential pricing favoring area residents over non-residents, by, among other things, virtually doubling the non-resident weekend and holiday parking and beach admission fees to $20. They also suggested reducing the number of parking spaces on the park's lawn by approximately 50 percent, from 916 to 491, and addressing safety, environmental and ecological concerns involving the 28-acre park that stretches along Forest Avenue, from Dearborn Avenue to Oakland Beach Avenue.

The commission listened intently as speaker after speaker, mostly from Rye City –from Bill McGinty, who called conditions "a disgrace" to Dawn Wilson, who argued for accentuating child safety over parking revenue, to Jim Flick, a former Rye City Council member, police commissioner and acting mayor, who once again volunteered his services as a traffic and safety consultant.

Others, like Nelson Sales, argued for continuance of reduced and free senior parking for long-time residents, while a Rye Habitat spokesperson stressed the importance of preserving the park and its duck pond as a natural habitat.

As citizen after citizen came to the microphone to speak, many of them mothers with their children in tow, arguing for the need for safety over parking revenue, commission members were visibly moved by testimony about kids, like the son of Rye resident Mary Ellen Foley, who had almost been killed by drivers speeding across the lawn.

They heard numerous protests that many area residents don't use the park and beach between May to October because of what they consider "the trashing of the park and beach" mostly by "outsiders," those comments underscored by others about "the eyesore" that the lawn becomes when it is filled with cars. There were also gripes about the lack of safety procedures, and numerous statements from those who said they had come to Rye because of the park and the beach, among other reasons, and they could no longer use those facilities because of the way the park has allegedly deteriorated.

At the end of the meeting, Carvin said meeting residents in person to hear a concerns really illuminated all the feedback the Commission has previously received.

"It is one thing to receive e-mails and letters with suggestions to improve Rye Town Park, it is another thing to meet those e-mails and letters," he said. "These improvements are going to happen, and they will continue to happen and shape the future of Rye Town Park in the years to come. There will be hiccups in the beginning, but the changes will be implemented and Rye Town Park will be better."