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David
Brown Must Go
If
you need an example of dreadful public relations, you don’t
have to look any further than the CEO and president of the
Capital District YMCA, J. David Brown, and his handling of
the apparently inevitable closing of the Washington Avenue
branch. Since first announcing that the branch was slated
for closure, Brown has been antagonistic and baldly condescending
with the very people who have volunteered their time and energy
to help save the branch, and seemingly duplicitous about working
with the community. Now, as a final insult, he has told the
Times Union that he is ceasing cooperation with the
ad-hoc community task force because, “You just cannot win
with an unreasonable group.”
It is hard to believe the claim that it has been the community
members who have been “unreasonable,” and frankly we don’t.
This group of Y members have been up-front with Brown from
the very beginning: They wanted to save their Y, and they
were willing to work. According to multiple people involved
in that effort, it was Brown who behaved in an unreasonable
manner. Task force member Chris Mercogliano has kept a log
of the alleged “lies and examples of a disingenuous attitude
toward the efforts to keep open the Washington Avenue Y, and
the obstructive behavior that we have met.”
The task force had come to Brown offering assistance on a
variety of fronts, but he told them that they could help only
with the membership drive. When asked for a benchmark of new
members that they would need to reach to save the Y, Brown
threw out the number 700. At last count, the task force has
successfully attracted more than 650 new members, but Brown
has since changed his tune. It must be 700 new members net,
he says, meaning that the members who haven’t renewed their
memberships count against the new members brought in, effectively
halving the number.
When Mercogliano wrote a letter to the editor, Brown berated
the task force, threatening that he would stop cooperating
if they spoke again to the press.
Task force members sought help from their elected officials,
including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and U.S. Rep Paul Tonko,
and state Assemblymen Jack McEneny and Ron Canestrari. When
word came back to Brown, his response was to lash out at the
task force, accusing them of meddling in the proprietary affairs
of the Y.
Brown’s emails to Y members, including to Albany Common Councilman
Anton Konev, have been cutting and derisive, not at all in
the tone of a partner. And that, we are forced to conclude,
is because Brown has never really been a partner with the
community in this effort.
The latest bait-and-switch offered by Brown was his offer
to sell the Y for $1 to the community, as though to challenge
their commitment. When the task force took him up on the offer,
he retracted it, telling them that he had started negotiations
with two other organizations, instead, and that the community
can talk to them. The list of insults from Brown goes on and
on (and is available to read on our blog, metroland.typepad.com).
We are appalled by Brown’s belligerence and the considerable
damage it has done to the reputation of the CDYMCA. Even more
disturbing than Brown’s behavior is the Y’s apparent obliviousness
to the importance of maintaining a multigenerational and multicultural
community center in the heart of Albany’s downtown. While
Brown argues that the building is just “a money pit,” and
that the community will be better served if the Y is unfettered
by that financial burden, he appears surprisingly ignorant
of the importance of an equitable and neutral gathering place
where the city’s diverse community can interact. And while
observers question the effort that has been made in recent
years to maintain and modernize the Washington Avenue facility,
it is hard not to notice the money the CDYMCA is pouring into
its new suburban facilities, which are a long distance from
the diverse urban communities that the YMCA, by its own mission
statement, is supposed to be serving.
As Corey Ellis, former common councilman and a member of the
task force, told Metroland, “This is further segregation
of our city. And that’s the problem here. This branch is in
the middle of the city. It is a place where there is a mixture
of young and old, people from affluent neighborhoods and not-so-affluent
neighborhoods. And that mix creates a stability for our community.”
By abandoning the Washington Avenue branch, the CDYMCA has
abandoned its belief in building strong families and strong
communities in urban centers where it is needed most. And
for his obstructionist and disingenuous role in this travesty,
we have come to the unfortunate conclusion that it is time
to call for David Brown’s resignation.
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