COUNCIL STICKS WITH OLIVET TO OPERATE RICKETTS CENTER
POTTSTOWN >> With a unanimous vote Monday night, Pottstown Borough Council granted a new four-year lease to the Reading-based Olivet Boys and Girls Club to operate the Ricketts Community Center on Beech Street.
The vote came after a speaker associated with a rival bid recommended to council that it should choose Olivet.
Hannah Davis, who has criticized Olivet’s rules in the past and was part of an alternative proposal to operate the center from a Pottstown-based organization called the STRIVE Initiative, made the surprise recommendation just before Monday night’s vote.
After the meeting, however, she clarified that she was speaking only as an individual.
“I have not been affiliated with STRIVE since shortly after the presentation in May,” she wrote in a Monday night email.
“Vision implies change and transition, and change and transition never comes easily,” Davis said after thanking council, the community and Olivet for caring about the fate of the Ricketts Center.
Her recommendation to choose Olivet over the STRIVE Initiative “does not come
without heartbreak and deep sadness for myself,” she said.
“It has been challenging to bring the community together,” said Davis. “Everyone has varying opinions on how best to operate the Ricketts Center. So while I care deeply about the Ricketts Center, my feeling is that perhaps in another four years, the entirety of the community will be able to bring a much stronger and fully collaborative proposal before council.”
One of those opinions about how to run the center came from Jonathan Corson, who said he was speaking as president of the Pottstown chapter of the NAACP.
“The Ricketts Center is a community center. It is not a club,” said Corson. “That’s why I have stood up and said STRIVE and Olivet should work together. If you don’t want to do that, then you should just turn the center back to the Parks and Recreation Department,” he said.
The borough owns the Ricketts Community Center but for the past 10 years has leased it to Olivet as a Boys and Girls Club to run programs there.
Some have complained the center is not open on weekends and in the summer evenings, when teens need it, and that as a Boys and Girls Club it does not serve the whole community, restricting adult access when children are there.
“Last week, when you asked Olivet how it would work with the community, and they said Health and Wellness Foundation, Hobart’s Run and the school district. That’s not the community. I’m the community. When (Councilwoman) Rita (Paez) asked if they had a relationship with the Latino community, they have no relationship with the Latino community. That’s the community. It’s not a club and if Olivet wants to run that center and honor the Ricketts name, they should let STRIVE work with them and do their part to make it a community center,” said Corson.
He said what David “poured into you tonight. That’s what we feel, and I felt we’re being neglected and you guys are neglecting us and don’t care about us,” said Corson. “We’re tired of being disrespected and the Ricketts name being disrespected,” he said.
“That center should be run by Parks and Rec, but because you don’t want to do that, you should mandate that Olivet works with STRIVE, and that’s NAACP’s stance” Corson said.
Councilman Joe Kirkland, who represents the Seventh Ward, where the center is located, said he had planned to vote against the Olivet lease until Davis spoke.
He said that the borough made a mistake when it stopped running the center, and by making an annual contribution to its operation, that it created “a hand’s off position.”
“The borough should run that community center. Other communities can do it. Why can’t we?” he asked. “Yes, we have financial issues, but if we really cared, we would find a way to make it work.”
Most council members said they hoped that Olivet would be able to collaborate with STRIVE on programming at the center.
First Ward Councilman Ryan Procsal said the people he met with who use the center “are happy with Olivet.”
Council President Dan Weand said he had “heard from STRIVE that they are willing to help” and he said he would like to see more borough involvement with the center.
Borough Manager Justin Keller said he has already arranged for Parks and Recreation Director Michael Lenhart to participate in decisions at the center.
“Hopefully, in the next four years, we will have the best community center in the area,” Weand said.
This article first appeared as a post in The Digital Notebook blog.
“It has been challenging to bring the community together. Everyone has varying opinions on how best to operate the Ricketts Center.”
— Hannah Davis, community activist “The borough should run that community center. Other communities can do it. Why can’t we? Yes, we have financial issues, but if we really cared, we would find a way to make it work.” — Joe Kirkland, Ward 7 Councilman