Meetings, Meetings And More Meetings

Every now and again, meetings of West Islip's many civic groups overlap and lead to either a difficult choice of which to attend, or in the case of a recent Monday, attend back-to-back meetings.

February 22 was a particularly busy evening: a 6 p.m. West Islip Summit Council meeting at the high school; 7 p.m. at the American Legion Hall for the West Islip Chamber of Commerce meeting and also at 7 p.m. was a presentation on the topic of cyber bullying at the high school.

I'm fortunate to have the services of a freelancer, Ariella Monti, a talented reporter and writer who also provided WestIslipTribune.com's coverage of the West Islip Summit this past October. She was at the high school reporting on the cyber bullying forum.

But this is not about a meeting schedule, but more about what happens at these meetings. With most civic group meetings, a small gathering of well intentioned local residents gather with the admirable goal of improving some portion of life in West Islip.

At any of these meetings, it can be a challenge to stay on topic and that unfortunately leads to these meeting running longer than they should. Personally, the most frustrating part of these meetings are the side conversations that inevitably happen.

At the recent Chamber of Commerce meeting, which featured an informative presentation about the on-going problem of heroin, one member in the audience asked the speaker — a narcotics detective — what progress have we made in the fight against heroin over the past 50 years.

What? Fifty years?

While I won't debate the merits of the question here, this to me was an example of someone awkwardly trying to make a point without really having a point and ultimately wasting valuable meeting time. But that can be the challenge of running and sitting through a civic group meeting. It's important for meeting attendees to bring up issues, and in order to do that, we sometimes have to sit through a question or two that might not be exactly on point.