To the editor: The turf field bond could have gone differently. If the group had presented the proposal properly it probably would have passed.

When you are in the financial town meeting and you are trying to get voter approval for expenditures, the voters can be broken down in 3 groups: The people who are in favor of your organization and your proposal, people who will be against any proposal or have specific objections to your proposal that will never change their minds (in this case, the people who had environmental concerns), and last the people in the middle who will listen to the proposal and/or trust their public officials to look at all the material and will vote based on that information. And polish the presentation. My business professor at college who taught salesmanship said: Win the argument and lose the sale. Was it more important to show that you are right about turf fields, or to get a turf field?

The problems with how this proposal was done were the following:

1) When the proposal was first presented it was going to be paid for exclusively by private funds. I was for that. It is hard to look a gift horse in the mouth.

2) When it changed a couple of months ago, and was expanded to include moving fixed structures and the track and needed the town to cough up $1.5 million to work. This is a very different animal and our officials needed time to have their experts look at the new plan. That is our elected officials doing their due diligence.

3) When the town council set up the ad hoc committee to look at the proposal, I expected to be able to vote for it next year.

4) When the group made the motion for the FTM BEFORE the ad hoc committee did its work, it was an arrogant slap in the face to our public officials who really wanted to work to make this happen. This is not how to win a vote in that room.

5) Lastly, The school committee, as they said in their blaster email of 5/22, have SOLE DISCRETION of what happens on school property. The proposal as written moving the bleachers, the track and the light poles, left a lot of room for the schools to decide that some part of the proposal was not what they wanted. Exactly what the school is approving must be determined before any group asks for money from the town.

I have always been amazed at how hard sports groups take it when the town doesn’t vote for whatever the sports teams need. I remember it took 6 years of advocating to finally get a theatre teacher at the high school. If you get discouraged at one set back you are doing your cause a disservice.

My advice is that the turf group is to not give up. Go back to the town council and the ad hoc committee, work out any issues and come back next year with more support. Better late than never was.

Joel Hellmann

Barrington