If Mark Twain was alive today, he might say, “Keep land, they’re not making it anymore.”

Let’s start over. If you were asked by the Board of Selectmen to support an effort to add five acres of real estate to the Grand List to keep the mill rate down, would you ever have said, “OK, let’s build condos on the Town Green”? Of course not.

For more than a decade, we have been grappling with what to do about Academy School. The building is abandoned and deteriorating. We must do something, but the ball fields and playground are not abandoned or deteriorating and are widely used for sports and recreation.

It’s time for the Board of Selectmen to come up with another plan, one that doesn’t give away our land.

Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Let’s keep our youth downtown! Save our ballfields and open space.

Rosalyn Fahey

Madison