Eco Arts Story. lookback

The Pine Lake Eco Arts camp was a summertime happening for children and parents. The Camp and staff of talented mentors organized a creative learning experience with poetry, nature walks, puppetry and the arts, that served the community for 9 years. Who can forget the song of robust young voices drifting across the lake on humid summer days? ‘We all live in a yellow submarine…’ Yes, we still hear those voices. This is a sad story; how could it be anything else? The Eco Arts camp is gone; a Petrie dish of artistic creativity cast aside. Now it is time to set the record straight; because, there have been a number of misleading statements & rumors regarding the camp. ‘So we sailed up to the sun, Till we found the sea of green…’ First, and foremost, the Eco Arts Summer Camp was funded by the parents of the children who attended the camp. The Camp was not subsidized by the City. A Council person complained in a letter that most of the camp budget went to pay staff; imagine, a City Council person complaining about camp salaries that the City does not pay! The third highest single expense for the camp was the nearly $2000 the camp paid the City for a permit and facility rental; the same Council person called the $300 a week paid by the Camp a ‘pittance’. When you add in the $334 weekly cost of the Permit, the bottom line amount the CamThe Eco-Arts Story paid the City per week was $634; about $125 per day. “And our friends are all on board…Many more of them live next door” The Council inexplicably became convinced that the 3 weeks long camp was somehow keeping the City from a gold mine of income, I guess we could call this the wishful thinking method of governance; because, there is no evidence to suggest the City can command $1500 for a 5 day, during the week, facility rental. “And the band begins to play” The Council adopted a false narrative as a cover for a rental increase that was nothing less than fiscal sabotage of the camp and the parents; who most certainly could not pay for such a cruel increase. The cruelty did not begin with the rental increase; the flimsy fiscal ‘cover’ that the Council concocted needed help; so, a shame based whisper campaign ensued to sully the camp and the reputations of staff and parents who supported the camp. “We all live in a yellow submarine…” The children, the parents, and our community lost a great gift; betrayed by a dysfunctional governing body. Not one council person stood up for the Eco Arts Camp; so, it is not a council that discusses and weighs matters that are important to the community. This is a council that sees itself as subservient to the Mayor’s agenda and not a council in tune with the community. A ‘mayor’ is ’first among equals’, not an autarch; the Council should not be a “rubber stamp” for one person’s flawed agenda. “…yellow submarine, yellow submarine…” With the summer camp gone, we witnessed and unprecedented level of Mayoral participation at kid’s events and a rash of ‘kid’s town halls’ as the Mayor fumbled for a way to blunt the fallout from the Council’s ‘Blue Meanie’ decision. ‘Here, Your Blueness... have some medicine!”