First: our most important volunteer is YOU. When you bag your garbage, separate recyclables and pay our dues, you make us possible.

Secondly there are our steady, reliable volunteers who do the work of baling the plastic, strapping the cardboard, stomping on the aluminum cans, lifting the containers of glass and tin cans, bundling the news paper etc.

Thirdly is another group of volunteers that you rarely see. And yet their contributions are invaluable. One example: Christopher Vaccaro has put "Kentrecycling.com" on the internet. Others have: cleaned our gutters, cut down and removed dead limbs that menaced our driveways, supplied the twine to bundle newspaper, substituted for our "regulars", helped ship out our Household Hazardous Waste etc...

We should also list among these volunteers NYS Senator Vincent Leibell. That giant $10,000 check you see on the wall represents almost one year of profit for our operation. The Senator tells us that the KRC is unique in his area and he wanted to help us.

Normally we spend our profits on making the center more efficient and less work for our volunteers. I propose that we reserve the $10,000 for projects that will enhance the center in a different way. Let me explain why:

At a town board meeting one night several years ago Senator Leibell presented a plan for a new municipal center for Kent. It would consist of a Town Hall, Police station, Library & etc. His plan also included the location, a clerk of the works, an engineer and an offer of one million dollars in seed money! He also suggested senior citizen housing but this was later rejected by the DEP as too ambitious given the sites' environmental constraints. There is no doubt that without such intelligent & thorough planning, the Town Administration Offices would still be wasting money in rent, the police would still be in rented trailers and the library would still be dealing with too little space. Without the Senator and his very complete plan, Kent would have continued wasting our tax money renting instead of building. And so I propose the following:

1. A six foot tall wooden fence along our side facing Route 52. This would make our center virtually invisible from 52.

2. One or two storage containers which would allow us to move our entire operation indoors.

3. A wall and fence that would make the side facing the new municipal center attractive.

4. A new front gate for our center. Eileen Civitillo, who designed the sign at our entrance, has come up with some great ideas regarding the wall which faces the new municipal center. We would like that to be special. Any suggestions? Contact Jim Backer