RE: [UC] Dogs: are the concerned neighbors all bark and no bite?

[Anthony West]

Sharieff,   Your distinction between a "public meeting" and a "community meeting" is quite correct. Since Friends of Clark Park has shown, in the past, an astonishing appetite for sponsoring fully public meetings in your sense -- meetings that facilitate the entire community -- indeed, it has sponsored more public meetings than any other entity in University City that I can think of -- perhaps we'll do so again on this issue.   In the meantime, we're going to hold our regular members meeting, at which we will discuss the situation. Anyone is welcome to attend. For those who actually wish to help FoCP develop an approach to the issue, ours is the easiest organization in the world to join. It is a forum that anyone with a genuine interest in the welfare of the park can enter. If honest poverty prevents someone from joining, see me personally and I'll provide assistance.   Some people may be confused as to FoCP's nature. In University City, many hunger for community groups to serve as miniature governments. They want groups whose foci are conflict management, rulemaking and entitlements. They approach these bodies as they would Congress or City Council, demanding that other people give them what they want, and that other people pay for it as well. In such political situations, being asked to contribute money, or to make a commitment, may be read as an insult or a defeat.   FoCP is not that. It is a park support group. These are perfectly normal civic groups, found around most city parks of note. Ours is particularly strong, active and diverse, I believe, but no different in kind from Friends of Pennypack Park, say. Park support groups exist because there are limits to what government park managers can do, and everybody knows it. Our mission is to go *back up* the world of governmental entitlement with a parallel world of *volunteer support*. That's our world. It's a world in which there is a difference between pitching in and not pitching in. I encourage everyone to pitch in to help improve the park we love.   While a park support group encounters conflict situations like any other body, its central mission is to solicit support for the park and so its central focus is always on points that bring people together, not on points that divide them. A park is an earthy place; our goal and our style is to facilitate people who attempt concrete good deeds -- arranging events or delivering improvements.   I'll see you next year, in the park, I hope.   -- Tony West