I have a few more audio clips from last Tuesday night's Township Committee meeting to post concerning the Middletown Swim and Tennis Club.
In this clip you can hear a young lady addressing the Township Committee during public comments and asking them, in light of all the budget cuts enacted by the State and local government when will someone ask the question "what about the kids ?"
3 comments:
There is somewhat of a myth to the "kids are getting hurt". Kids may miss not going to the pool. They will find other ways to play and have fun because it is part of being a kid. Resilience and the capacity to adapt quickly is it what makes kids different than adults -- they haven't learned how to be a victim until they are taught how to be a victim by the adults they learn from.
The adult parents need not to be a role model for being a victim and not set an example of using children as leverage for getting something that they, the adults, want.
The township committee saw this coming three years ago and waited until nothing could be done about it. This is the kind of thing that a finance committee could have analyzed and made recommendations for how best to handle.
This never was a public swim club, in reality it was a semi private club as you had to have bought a membership to use the club. If you lived in town but could not afford an annual membership for your family you could not use to the club. If residents had been permitted to do this there probably would have been more people using the facility and more revenue would have been brought in. Most likely this would have happened if it was privately owned and not another failed attempt of government trying to run a business.
The purchase of the swim club had a number of goals linked to it by the Republican majority. One was was a publicly/taxpayer financed vote getting project for the Republican majority. Another was bonding work. Peter Carton benefited from the bonding work and he benefited from the votes for the Republican majority that he chairs and controls in Middletown.
After asking what about the kids --who will survive this mostly because they could care less, much like the majority of the adults in Middletown; ask what about the taxpaying public that pays the bills for the pool utility while being denied the use of the facility because they can't afford the membership fees.
This is another example of Middletown residents paying for what they don't get. Ask not "what about the kids"; ask what about the mismangement and habitual lack of communication from the township committee. Ask what about failing to see the trend pointed out by former committee members Short and Byrens. Don't turn this into a what about the children issue when it is what about lack of elected and appointed leadership and management that will try to blame it on the 2% tax levy cap. This is just the beginning of the budget bad news for 2012.
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