Hail to the Riverside victors

Now that all the craziness surrounding the vote and recount of the proposed Riverside Park sale is over (I hope), let me take the opportunity to say the grassroots effort by those opposed to selling off half the 18-acre park to the adjacent Coast Guard Academy was impressive.

When poll workers had finished the recounting, making sure that this time they had counted absentee ballots once and not twice, the result was a rejection of the $2.9 million sale by a scant 19 votes.

I happened to favor the sale, an opinion I voiced in a column and which this newspaper shared editorially. It is such an honor for New London to host one of the nation’s military academies. From my perspective, and that of the newspaper, it seemed reasonable for the city to work with the academy to help it meet its space needs, while using the sale proceeds to improve the remaining 9 acres of park land.

Some have construed this newspaper’s difference of opinion, and its criticism of the recent attempt to preempt recount results by pointing to technical problems in the sales contract, as an attack on the anti-sale contingent. I don’t see the evidence of that. We just disagreed.

Those opposed to the sale are deserving of their electoral victory. They were passionate in arguing that selling half the park would be a disservice to the surrounding neighborhood. Their rallies at Riverside Park gave the larger community renewed interest in it. Led by that always persistent and often irascible community activist Kathleen Mitchell, the park defenders effectively re-framed the debate. From their perspective a yes vote would not be cast in support of the academy, but against a working-class neighborhood.

In the end that argument and their hard work prevailed. That victory has to be far sweeter than prevailing because of technical problems in a sales contract.

Congratulations.