Wednesday, April 30, 2008

MPCA SPRING MEETING: A NEW START?

The MPCA had its bi-annual spring meeting last night. Things were a bit rocky, but might be looking up. I say this with very cautious optimism and just a touch of personal pride.

Turnout was the highest in several years, since the MPCA broke off from the much larger Springlake Civic Association. Attendance has been extremely small in the past few years. I am going to take a little bit of credit for building interest in the meeting, if no one minds. At the very least, I announced the date three weeks ago so people could make plans to attend, instead of waiting until the very last possible moment, as the MPCA board did. The e-mail announcement was poorly written, confusing, and was barely sent out within the technicality of the 5-day requirement.

The newsletter's first edition had the wrong location, so a second printing had to be hastily run off and distributed on Saturday afternoon. Even so, most people got there, among them many who have never come to a neighborhood meeting. Some of those spoke up, too.

Whoever came up with the idea to have sign-up sheets for committees on a table at the back of the room deserves credit, too. That was good thinking. (This was quite an improvement over the usual fruitless begging for volunteers which always leads to complaining about how "all the work is done by so few," and how little participation we get.) It was a little like a silent auction. People could peruse the choices and find something to their liking right after the meeting when their interest level was still high. It looked like a great success.

There were no surprises in the election. The Cartledge-Quillian slate was affirmed. Glenn Cartledge had firmly rejected the nomination in the preceeding weeks by a number of residents to put a very qualified, experienced Wesley Drive volunteer on the board while he sought others who met whatever unknown, unspecified standards he required, until almost the last minute.

But ultimately, there were no nominations from the floor for the sake of avoiding an unpleasant win-lose election fight.

The new board members, Hardman Knox, Leanne French and Linda Houser certainly had done nothing to deserve being drawn into a Cartledge-Quillian engineered political conflict by virtue of their willingness to serve the neighborhood. If any spot deserved a challenge, it was only that of president. Mr. Cartledge was the beneficiary the spirit of good will towards the others, in spite of his stubborn refusal to cooperate.

Mr. Cartledge needs to show not only that he is now his own man, and no longer an extension of Mr. Quillian, but that he is also willing to listen and carefully take into account the voices of prudence, temperance, historical perspective and reason.

Next: Paving

1 comment:

The Park said...

An interesting meeting, to be sure. While professing flexibility and willingness to entertain other opinions, the Quillian/Sparrow/Warren/Cartledge cadre seems more determined than ever to implement some kind of surfaced path in or around the park, and the concerns of Wesley Drive residents don't matter. One wonders why. You would think that the well-founded fears of those most directly affected would be given primary attention, but not so. As a local wag has said, you can put lipstick on a pig and call it beautiful, but it is still a pig. In this case, a terribly destructive pig that will chew up everything beautiful and worthwhile in its path solely, it seems, to satisfy some egos, the owners of which hold in higher regard than the welfare of residents. What a pity. It means that those who care about the park, its history, and the benefits that it holds for all of us, residents and visitors alike, are secondary to some kind of misguided self gratification. And it isn't just the path -- when the question was asked about the impact of Operation Boot Camp, the response was, "You figure out what to do about it, and we will back you up." This is entirely inappropriate -- if there is a problem in the neighborhood caused by some outside force (and there is), the association should take the lead in fixing it. Otherwise, what are they there for? I have been in neighborhood leadership positions in the past, and I would never think the way this board thinks. If there is a problem, the board should figure out how to deal with it. And without insulting people, like that which occurred when the association president called Gail Driebe a baby killer in a previous meeting because she was opposed to the idea of stop signs. Give me a break, people; the time for fiefdoms is past -- we need to be sensitive to the needs and concerns of our residents. After all, what kind of legacy and example do want to leave for our children? And do we care? Some do.