POTTSTOWN >> The Montgomery County Commissioners made Pottstown the first stop on their annual “listening tour” Monday night and heard about two things from the audience.
One was very familiar: “When will the Keim Street Bridge be rebuilt?” (The answer remains: “Work is set to begin in 2020”).
The rest of the meeting was taken up with a comparatively new development: the decision last November by the Philadelphia-Freedom Valley YMCA to close the Pottstown branch on North Adams Street in June.
Most recently, the larger organization rejected recommendations by a task force it formed that the branch remain open, that a new YMCA be built in Pottstown, or that the facility (and several million dollars) be returned to the community.
Commissioners’ Chairwoman Valerie Arkoosh said she had spoken once with Shaun Elliott, CEO of the Philadelphia Freedom Valley YMCA “to do some fact-finding” and added that she hopes to be able to broker some kind of settlement satisfactory to the community and larger YMCA.
But some in the audience, including task force member Dan Boyer, didn’t hold out much hope. He noted that the larger organization never brought the problems with the facility – $11 million in capital needs over five years and an operating deficit of $700,000 – to the community to ask for help or input.
He said when Elliott has spoken to the task force, he has been “absolutely unbending.”
The commissioners were urged to exercise any influence they can to keep the facility open.
“The June 29 deadline is really a gun to our heads,” said Larry Cohen, another member of the task force. He suggested the commissioners could be most helpful by staving off that deadline “and buying us some time.”
Others saw a larger issue.”They don’t want to be here. How do you deal with an organization that says it serves this community, but obviously does not want to be here?” asked David Charles.
“This seems like a pattern,” said Johnny Corson, president of the Pottstown chapter of the NAACP.
“They closed the Audubon facility with three-months notice. Does it seem to you like they are closing YMCA’s on low-income people?” Corson asked. “Their mission statement said they will help people who are at a disadvantage, but they are pouring resources into high-income communities. Doesn’t that concern you?” he asked.
Arkoosh said Pottstown is a “community the county is deeply invested in,” and that she is trying to serve as an “honest broker,” to bring the Conshohocken-based non-profit to the table to talk.
“But I don’t want to over-promise. They are a private entity, we have zero authority over them,” she said.
However, Vice Chairman Ken Lawrence said what he plans to bring to the issue is the “moral authority” the commissioners can exercise.
He said he was approached at a recent function by a member of the YMCA who offered an update on the $30 million YMCA facility being built in Upper Moreland.
“I said I have no desire to hear about the Willow Grove project. I want to know what is going on in Pottstown,” said Lawrence. “I don’t understand having a task force and then disregarding what that task force says if they didn’t say what you wanted.”
Joe Ciresi, a former Spring-Ford School Board member running against Republican Tom Quigley for the 146th District seat in the Pennsylvania House, advised the community to seek out the Philadelphia-Freedom Valley YMCA’s donors and make them aware of the situation.
“These are people who made large donations to help the underprivileged in the community. Get in touch with them and say ‘are you aware of what is going on here in Pottstown?’ That will get their attention,” Ciresi said.
“I’ve been so impressed by all the people in community who are working to try to resolve this, I think the task force did a great job. I hear clearly having child care two miles away is really not a solution at all,” Arkoosh said of the often-touted 10-year lease the YMCA has signed with a facility in Lower Pottsgrove Township.
“We have so many things that tear us apart in this country and the Y is one of the few places where we can come together,” she said.
