YMCA REJECTS ADVICE TO KEEP BRANCH OPEN
Board chairman says focus on building limits Y ability to serve community
POTTSTOWN » The chairman of the Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA has rejected the recommendation made by its own task force that the Pottstown branch remain open.
In a letter dated Tuesday, Dan Tropeano, chairman of the board, responded to David DiMatteo, who chaired the transition team.
On April 4, that transition team, comprised of 17 community members, rejected the larger organization’s instructions to take the option of keeping the Pottstown branch open off the table and instead recommended either that the branch remain open, or a new YMCA be built in Pottstown, or that Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA return the building, and several million dollars, to the community.
In his letter, Tropeano wrote the task force’s “fervent passion to serve — specifically the Pottstown community” is “heartwarming,” but wrote bluntly: “We need to leave the 724 North Adams Street location — the building is failing.
By moving now, we are better able to secure continuity of service.”
Repeating previous arguments made by Philadelphia Freedom Valley CEO Shaun Elliott, Tropeano further wrote, “the capital costs required to sustain the building are over $11.5 million with $3.6 million needed immediately.”
Elliott has said the $11.5 million figure is a capital cost spread over 10 years, according to Don Smale, who was a member of the task force.
On Sunday, The Mercury reported that despite an professed expertise in obtaining grants which convinced local leaders to undertake the 2012 merger with the Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA, there is no evidence that the larger Y ever applied for state grants to help address the capital needs in Pottstown now cited as a reason for its closure.
In an April 4 response
to a Mercury query, Elliott wrote that “90 percent of YMCA funds come from membership, 5 percent from fundraising and 5 percent from grants.”
In materials provided to the task force and dated October, 2017, a YMCA analysis noted that while memberships were less than would be anticipated in the market, “full privilege memberships” were holding steady in 2016 between 1,500 and 2,000, and members whose insurance was helping pay membership dues was on a steady increase.
“Based on information reported to us, the condition of the building is the result of operating deficits that have existed for nearly two decades,” Tropeano wrote, again echoing a point Elliott has made repeatedly in statements to The Mercury and to organizations passing resolutions opposing the decision to close the Pottstown YMCA.
“Over the last five years alone, the Pottstown YMCA has experienced $3.5 million in operating deficits. Despite this financial hardship,
the Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA has invested more than $1 million for capital improvements during this same period,” Tropeano wrote.
“An additional $1.6 million was invested in the building immediately following the Pottstown YMCA’s merger with Freedom Valley in 2008,” he added.
That $3.5 million deficit is exactly the figure one would reach by adding up the $700,000 fee charged to the Pottstown branch each year for administration overhead and “intra Y fees” over the course of five years.
As for the $1 million in capital investments, Smale told borough council at its April 4 meeting that Elliott had told him the Y would normally spend about $600,000 a year for maintenance and upkeep and capital costs on the 48-year-old building.
In other words, had the “normal amount” been spent on the building, it would have added up to $3 million over five years, not $1 million.
The $1.6 million invested in 2008 was from local donors, and did not come out of the Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA budget.
Nevertheless, Tropeano wrote that “Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA is unequivocally committed to the residents of Pottstown and its community.”
“We believe there are many ways to honor our commitment to serve the Pottstown community outside the Adams Street location,” he wrote, pointing to the Y’s 10-year lease at a Lower Pottsgrove facility to continue to provide child care.
However, he wrote, “the lack of recommendations from the task force and the singular focus on a deteriorating building has limited our ability to truly serve the residents of Pottstown.”
Appropriating a phrase Elliott has used in every communication with the Pottstown community, Tropeano wrote “closing a building is never easy,” adding “we have prioritized service delivery to Pottstown children, families and individuals over the brick and mortar structure.”