For some time, Councilor Glenn Felton has been critical of the town's parks and recreation department for "spawning subcommittees" and asked for an accounting of how the subcommittees are formed.

There are 11 subcommittees under the department, but only a few of them are active. Among the groups that regularly meet are a recycling committee; a Parks, Open Space and Trails (POST) committee; and a group volunteering to watch for illegal activity in the town's recreational areas. There are nearly 30 active volunteers serving on the subcommittees.

The rules for how these committees are formed and how they are dissolved were examined at the Edgewood Town Council meeting on Oct. 21. During the discussion, Felton, who works in Albuquerque during the day, said he or others might attend subcommittee meetings if they were held at a different time.

"Some (subcommittees) set meeting times that are not reasonable," he said.

He suggested that the committees be urged to meet after 6 p.m. The idea was shot down as unfair to those who couldn't meet at that time.

Roger Holden, who heads the Parks and Recreation Department, said he hopes to keep the volunteers he has.

"To find volunteers who work as hard as these do, I'd hate to lose them," he said.

Holden said he also was asked by the interim town administrator, Karen Mahalick, not to attend one of the meetings of one of his department's subcommittees, the Edgewood After School (EASY) Program. Mayor Robert Stearley said it was up to Mahalick to decide which meetings Holden attends.

The EASY Program became the focal point of a controversy when it set out to create an after-school program for elementary and middle school students in the Edgewood area. The effort drew comments from school board members from the Moriarty-Edgewood School District and was seen as something of a threat to an existing after-school program called Shining Stars.

School board member Audrey Jaramillo, who has been involved with the program since its inception, came with several members of the original town committee to request permission to apply for grants for an after-school program.

She was asked to meet with the after-school committee to form a grant-writing committee. That group would be tasked with writing grants and bringing the completed materials to the town.

It would ultimately be the town that would make the application, according to Mahalick.

The town also gave a certificate of appreciation to one of its volunteers, Josh Young, a student at East Mountain High School. Young volunteered to build trails and signs for Section 34, an open space in southern Edgewood.