From the bcct:
Time for a public saging
By: KATE FRATTI
Bucks County Courier Times
It's a little new-agey for a historic borough, but I propose a public saging of Morrisville. Couldn't hurt.
Huge bundles of the healing herb sage - saging practitioners call them smudge sticks - could be burned in a daylong spiritual cleansing ceremony aimed at ridding the old river town of its collective angst.
Could take mountains of dried herb to get the job done. Financially-pressed Morrisville's got a debilitating case of what ails it - pessimism, skepticism, paranoia, negativity and crippling doubt. It leads to a lot of bickering, nay-saying, finger pointing, second-guessing and conspiracy theorizing.
Sage! More sage!
Symptoms include an inability to celebrate even the good stuff. That includes large gifts of money, like the $400,000 grant just announced for improvement to the especially hard-pressed First Ward, made up of scattered blue-collar neighborhoods that literally are on the wrong side of the tracks and so separated from the borough proper.
The grant, $80,000 a year for five years, is courtesy of the Wachovia Regional Foundation. The amount won't pave the streets with gold, but it could be the impetus for some cleanup and improved safety. Maybe leverage other grants from other sources.
A strategic plan for the ward, paid for with a $100,000 planning grant, calls in part, for the creation of an information center where Ward One and Bridge Street residents could get be made aware of resources - financial counseling, training, jobs, transportation, stuff like that.
And so we're told this week that the first $80,000 will be administered out of a new First Ward community center at the Robert Morris apartment complex on Bridge Street. It's 900 square feet of free office space that'll be accessed from the street. A paid coordinator will plan programs and organize events like neighborhood cleanups in the First Ward and along Bridge Street.
This is where, if this column was an old record, the needle would jump, and then sail across the record with a grating scratch and ripping sound.
Robert Morris apartments? What? That's in Ward Two. No one told us there'd be a community center at Robert Morris!
Another symptom of what ails Morrisville is failure to communicate. While the Bucks County Housing Group welcomed so much resident input before it made the application to Wachovia, there's been little communication since, community organizers say. No one was invited to review the grant application, and a resident steering committee sure as heck never knew the housing group planned to put the center in its low-income apartment complex instead of the senior center or some vacant store front. What else don't we know, they wonder.
The committee learned about the Robert Morris location, members said, in a meeting days before the location and the grant were to be publicly announced at an event that was to include Wachovia reps and Congressman Pat Murphy.
At that same meeting residents were insulted to further learn the steering committee would be dissolved and a new resident advisory board formed.
Say what? After all the work we did?
Hard feelings have ensued. Some committee members planned to protest at the formal check presentation, which had been set for Feb. 1.
Then someone thought better of that. Protest $400,000? Really? Risk alienating Wachovia just to make a point? Mayor Rita Ledger called Nancy Samborsky, executive director of the housing group, to press for more meetings. Nancy, who is, by all accounts, a caring professional and a girl with her heart in the right place, called off the check presentation and celebration until she could meet again with residents to hear them out. And to explain why a center at Robert Morris will work for the First Ward.
At those meetings residents say they'll seek reassurance that the grant money - whose release they helped secure by participating in community meetings and conducting surveys and focus groups - will be used as they'd hoped. To strengthen the First Ward and not Bucks County Housing Group.
And so there will be more talks. Someone would do well to smudge the conference table before anyone utters a sound.
February 03, 2010 02:13 AM
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Beth M., 02-03-10, 2:59 pm Rate: 0 Report
Isn't it the 4th ward in Morrisville that needs the most help? They sure wouldn't have to scam by not having any apartment buildings to be able to qualify for the grant.
I just don't understand why anything in a town the size of Morrisville would be for one ward and not all wards. The Ivan House is an excellent resource/outrea ch center. Why would Morrisville need another one. Morrisville is less than 2 square miles total. Sounds like this first ward group had a chance to do something wonderful for the whole town but instead are playing the gimmy gimmy game. Just more of the same old stuff for Morrisville. Its a real shame. Maybe mom was wrong and people really do never change.
False Profit, 02-03-10, 3:22 pm Rate: 0 Report
In its adjective form, the on-line Merriam Webster dictionary defines "sage" as things like:
"wise through reflection and experience" and
"proceeding from or characterized by wisdom, prudence, and good judgment".
That's the problem. We haven't had enough sage people running things in Morrisville. Their ham-handed my-way-or-the-h ighway bungling, smackdowns, and poor communications have engendered mistrust and distrust, even of good things.
Essentially, we've reaped what we've sown. Hopefully, that's changing under the new council majority. The town just doubled down on the same old same old with the school board, though, unless some people have major changes in personality, outlook, and behavior.
