A few days ago someone was asking about the Morrisville dog park, and if it was still in the works to be built. Well, apparently it is but funds are a bit light. So the group wants to put sponsorship signs around the park. Stephen Worob, never at a loss for words has some interesting comments in the article.
From the BCCT:
Mixed reviews for fundraising idea
By: DANNY ADLER
Bucks County Courier Times
The Friends of the Morrisville Dog Park group is putting together a "Morrisville is Going to the Dogs Cocktail Pawty" to raise money for the park.
Morrisville dog park organizers need cash.
And while efforts to raise the needed $15,000 to $20,000 are moving, they're sort of crawling - a few hundred dollars here, maybe a thousand there.
So how can organizers beef up their bank account to pay for a bark park on a plot of unused borough-owned open space preserved with county cash?
Ellen Stieve, who's heading the effort, said sponsorship signs similar, yet smaller, to those on baseball fences would certainly help. She proposes four sponsorship signs, which others are calling advertisements, to hang on the interior fence of the future 1-acre park at East Philadelphia and South Delmorr avenues.
Stieve hopes that each of the signs (perhaps in the shape of a bone) will produce up to $2,500 annually.
"It's a privately funded effort and we're looking for some different revenue streams," Stieve said. "Sponsorship is one of the ways we can raise money."
Borough council hasn't made a decision on the issue, but the proposal has received mixed reviews from officials and advisers and has sparked a debate on whether commercial signs should be allowed on tax-payer funded open space.
Some council members like Stephen Worob downright oppose the idea.
"This is evolving into something we didn't want to see," he said at a recent council meeting.
Likewise Councilman David Rivella said the idea goes against "the spirit of open space." While he originally said it's reasonable to allow the signs for one year just to raise startup cash, he opposes the idea the more he thinks about it.
"What's to stop everyone in the borough from saying, 'I want to sell a sign for what I want to do?' " said Rivella, who is calling on the council to hold a yes-or-no vote to see if it supports signs at the dog park.
Councilwoman Jane Burger supports the signs, saying the area isn't passive open space like the wooded 6-acre Graystone preserve on Crown Street, William Penn's starting point for buying land from the Indians in 1682. Rather, Burger said, the Delmorr property is active open space.
"Obviously, any signs have to be carefully planned and thought out and keep with the use of the property," Burger said in a recent phone interview. "I'm not convinced that it's going to turn into gaudy commercialism."
Burger also said Morrisville will have the final say in who can put their ads on the signs. Rivella, though, worries that that could lead to discrimination claims if the council begins regulating who can and can't advertise.
And as a borough resident notes, Morrisville already is involved in a federal First Amendment lawsuit for prohibiting a strip club at the Stockham Building at South Pennsylvania Avenue and East Bridge Street.
While Councilwoman Eileen Dreisbach said the majority of Morrisville's Recreation Board favors allowing the signs on the fence that will separate big and little dogs for a limited time, two members of the Morrisville Environmental Advisory Council, Bill Setzer and Deborah Colgan, have publicly urged the council to reject the proposal.
Colgan said that sponsorships should be built into the design of the park like it is at Robert Morris Plaza with something like sponsorship bricks. She also worries that the signs will commercialize land preserved for the public.
"I do not believe that advertising belongs in public parks," Colgan said. "We already paid for this land, why should we subject ourselves to advertising when we go to it? You don't see ads in parkland, and there's a good reason for it. Advertisements belong on private land."
Dreisbach said it would be ideal to have no signs, "but I know how difficult it is to raise money."
Kris Kern, Bucks County's open space coordinator, said: "On that property, there are no provisions limiting signs."
But in moving forward with Bucks' most recent round of open space cash, she said the county will look into limiting signs on preserved open space.
Signs, she said, can "interfere with the scenic value you're trying to protect."
Stieve argued that the signs would be "tastefully done" and would not be visually distracting. But whether or not borough council signs on to Stieve's proposal, the Friends of the Morrisville Dog Park will continue fundraising efforts. The nonprofit organization is putting together a "Morrisville is Going to the Dogs Cocktail Pawty," as well as selling T-shirts. For more information on those and other efforts, e-mail estieve@comcast.net.
