"Right now, we're the closest we've every been," said Nathan Hartrich of the Morningside Home Owners Association. "Honestly, it's tough to say you trust a politician because people because politicians are out for themselves or whatever, but that's not true here. I think that finally we're getting to a spot where the town and the residents agree on something, and that's putting a park at Westwood."
Hartrich added that there is an element of risk involved with this sort of maneuver.
"Alienation is kind of scary because you're taking a large piece of property and saying that you're going to make decisions later on it," he said. "That's where trust comes in. Right now, we have to trust that the people that we elected are going to make the decisions that we would want them to make as residents in Amherst."
"We've come to a point where we have to do something," he began. "None of us know where this is going to end; we know in nine months that we may have an answer, but we have to start."