In a message dated 6/8/2007 12:54:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
But I can say that they are smart enough to understand that THEIR version of the NID/BID is troubled and , with these new Fenton/UCD developments, that their chances of getting neighborhood support might be dead. My thoughts are to go to them and explain that they can hold out for FULL control of a NID that never happens or they can support a community CID/NID that does happen Great, in theory. But in reality I seriously doubt whether "they" understand any of this, yet -- the apparent 2x4 upside of the head delivered yesterday by our district City Council member notwithstanding. There's a question of who "they" are. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, isn't Amy Gutmann with a grasp of the astronomical number of issues confronting a world-class research university. It's an elaborate "tree" -- one branch of which involves community relations, the outermost twigs of this branch comprising people who can't have much of an idea of the situation on the ground here, or have been too insecure in their jobs to counter the conventional wisdom prevailing up there on what they think is the moral high ground, or things wouldn't have gone as far as they have. I'm reminded of an earlier "First Thursday" meeting where the VP to whom Glenn Bryan reports kept bragging about all the "terrific" things Penn was doing for the community already and was planning to do in the future. When I asked her "by whose definition are all these things terrific?" she didn't have a clue what I meant. It was clear that if she thought they were terrific, they must be terrific. Among other things, she was talking about 40th Street north of Walnut. I wonder whether she thought the immigrant-owned businesses that were being kicked out to make way for whatever upscale shoppes Penn had in mind thought everything was so "terrific." At that same meeting, a member of the Penn Board of Trustees kept bragging about Penn's "Partnership" with the community. I suggested that it wasn't much of a partnership because all it comprised was Penn giving money to organizations that would use it to further Penn's anointed (yes, I used the term -- and attributed it to Thomas Sowell) agenda. That a partnership implied people getting together as equals and making some mutual decisions. He arrogantly replied that he was an attorney and he could give me definitions of "partnership" that fit the model if I wanted. So, how do we get "them" to understand? I submit for dialog the idea that we should just go ahead with the community meeting that Mrs Blackwell apparently asked the University City Review to organize, which hopefully will have the deliverable of either detailed coverage in the paper, or a report, or both. Then, let "them" come to us. Who comes to whom determines who approaches the meeting with hat-in-hand and who gets to frame the debate. I submit that Penn should send some high-level people to do the former and we should do the latter. Always at your service & ready for a dialog, Al Krigman ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com.
