Talk about burning bridges!
At least with Judy Rodin, we had someone who was politically astute in
her efforts to connect Penn with the community. And I'm afraid that
Amy Gutmann has other priorities for Penn, and/or her attention has
been elsewhere or her advisors are not on the ball with what's
happening.
Obviously, Penn is the major player. Real estate interests and other
universities are in the mix, but Penn is and always will be number one.
I think everyone sees that. And there's a large synergy between Penn
and the community in "University City" -- the very name expresses it.
So we have problems and disagreements. So what? Penn isn't going
anywhere and neither is the community.
It's remarkable how one very minor incident could do so much to unravel
the arrangements that so many people invested so many years in building
up.
- Kirk
On Jun 8, 2007, at 7:44 AM, Glenn wrote:
Folks, something else came out yesterday that is very indicative of
the underlying problem with UCD. The Councilwoman told everyone that
her staff member, Marty, was removed from the UCD Board. Later, Glenn
Bryan, with whom she has worked, was also either removed or not
permitted on the Board.
We don’t know anything about how Penn real estate and its corporate
partners choose this body and they can change it at will.
Mr. Lewis Wendell, at one point yesterday, asserted that all the civic
associations have Board members on the UCD Board. A civic association
leader leaned over to me and gave me a little hearsay.
She suggested that the UCD picked or suggested the civic association
representatives and not some internal voting process after some
discussion by the members.
Has anyone anything else to add about the civic associations’
representative choosing process? Are their people in the associations
that have UCD Board representatives that can confirm or deny if there
were appropriate discussions to choose your representatives? Did you
find out that you had a Board representative but had not heard of any
process for choosing? Can anyone describe an internal choosing
process?
I know that with all of the UCD initiatives, it is a very strict UCD
policy that UCD handpicks the "community" representatives and may
close out all stakeholders suspected of not rubber stamping the
planned agenda. So although I haven’t been on the Board of any of the
civic associations except FOCP, the brief story from the civic
association leader sounds believable to me.
--
Kirk Wattles
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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