Trying different tough love tactics

Parents must make prudent decisions when trying to save their children from addiction.

“To translate the principles of the YMCA’s Christian heritage into programs that nurture children, strengthen families, build communities and develop healthy spirits, minds and bodies for all.

“Our values of honesty, caring, respect and responsibility are integrated into our operations and guide our behavior in the achievement of our mission.”

The mission statement of the Freedom Valley YMCA promises to nurture children, build communities and to emphasize honesty, caring, respect and responsibility in the organization’s behavior. Don’t tell that to Pottstown. The Philadelphia-based Freedom Valley Y has demonstrated anything but a respect for community and an honest and caring responsibility for all, not just in wealthier communities where YMCAs exist.

The organization continues on its path to close the Pottstown YMCA in two months and relocate programs to other sites, including moving child care and pre-K classes to Lower Pottsgrove where access for families will be difficult.

Pottstown’s outrage over the planned closure — and the questions surrounding the decision announced in November — continue to grow.

The Pottstown chapter of the NAACP and Pottstown Borough Council last week joined the Pottstown School Board and an online petition effort of residents to protest the closing.

And on Thursday, the task force which the Freedom Valley YMCA put together to recommend how to provide alternative programs recommended reversing the decision.

The task force adopted a resolution that not only opposes the closing of the Pottstown facility, but also calls on the regional Y organization to either build a new facility or give the current one back to the community to be run locally.

Additionally, if the building is to be returned to the community, the NAACP calls on “Freedom Valley YMCA to pay the borough $7.6 million that will be used to renovate the building and launch its re-start.”

Pottstown Borough Council resolution opposing the YMCA closure closely mirrors the one adopted March 15 by the Pottstown School Board.

For its part, the NAACP resolution points out the Freedom Valley Y organization is closing a facility in a low-income high-minority community while at the same time constructing “state of the art facilities” in communities with “significantly wealthier socio-economic populations.”

And while the Freedom Valley Y and its board president Shaun Elliott cite money and the costs of repairing an aging building as rationale for closing, the local protests point to the money the larger organization has denied Pottstown.

In a series of columns published as paid advertorial pieces, former Mercury editorial writer and Pottstown School Board member Tom Hylton detailed the financial concern, noting that Pottstown brought a $2.8 million endowment to the 2008 merger with $1.8 million of that earmarked for a new boiler and building repairs.

A member of that task force, Don Smale, told Pottstown Borough Council Wednesday when the group started to look at the numbers, there was “something that just didn’t sit right.”

Smale said documents show the Pottstown Y was “basically breaking even at the time of the first merger” in 2008, and “the question then becomes how do you go from breaking even to a $700,000 loss in 10 years, when the purpose of a merger is to improve the financial operations of the organization?”

Mercury staff writer Evan Brandt posed these questions to Elliott whose written responses have been published.

His replies have not assuaged the local community, particularly answers that point to construction of a new facility in Willow Grove as taking a large portion of the Freedom Valley capital budget.

Elliott and the board have dug in their heels and instead of slowing down the closure in response to the pushback, they seem to be accelerating, Smale told council.

Protests are falling on deaf ears. Freedom Valley YMCA executives and board members have nothing to lose — except their integrity in knowingly turning their backs on their own mission.

By the action to close this YMCA, the organization is abandoning not only a community but also the very ideals which have defined the YMCA for 144 years.

The mission to nurture and serve the need to grow in mind, body and spirit must be pursued as vigorously in Pottstown as in any other community.

The people of this fine town demand and deserve nothing less.