The Y, an A and two consonants

I attended the ninety-five minute meeting in Norwich City Council chambers Monday morning, along with about eighty-five other people (not counting four videographers from each of the CT based TV stations--to include three who cannot tell time and showed up late, with Fox 61 as the latest at 1130) to listen to a very cogent and comprehensive chronology by a member of the YMCA of Southeastern Connecticut Board, P. Michael Lahan, on how it is and has come to be that a downtown fixture and a part of Norwich for over a century will very probably be turning out the lights at the end of this month.

It was a somber and sobering assessment with little to be cheerful about and I appreciated the candor and insight that Mr. Lahan brought to his explanation. For anyone, within and without the room, who hoped/believed/thought "we" were a bake sale or two away from turning things around, the news must have been crushing.

As I understood Mr. Lahan, the programs that mean so much to so many, as is so often the case in the world of non-profit agencies, are not self-sustaining. He used the word 'subsidized' which means that other programs, like the Yoga, Pilates and fitness center operations, need to generate enough money to pay for themselves AND be able to also offset the costs of after-school daycare, Saturday basketball, summer camp programs and other outreaches.

Mr. Lahan spoke about the burdens and costs borne by YMCA members--and compared membership populations to other YMCA branches--Westerly, Rhode Island has 6,000 members while the Y in Norwich has about 1,800, as one example.

The council chamber was filled with people who arrived filled with hope, and who seemed to become filled with other emotions as the morning wore on. Some wanted to know 'why didn't the board of the Y go to the community when the finances started to turn bad' somehow overlooking that a stagnant membership might suggest (to some) that 'the community' didn't exist without quotes around it, and couldn't be bothered anyway. Not a comforting thought for any of us on a rainy and damp Monday morning.

One person, I think confusing search for the guilty with seeking a solution, demanded to know 'who appointed the board?' and where he could get a copy of the YMCA by-laws. The devil, he may have heard, is in the details. Two people, one after the other, rallied (or tried to) the audience by pointing out that each of them had a petition to 'save the Y' and that between them they had collected over 2,500 signatures. People applauded--but no money was collected.

I was reminded of an observation by Bob Dylan that 'money doesn't talk, it swears' while Mr. Lahan was explaining every two weeks the YMCA must 'make payroll' and that number is some $30,000--to include all withholding and benefits and that the money to make payroll will run out at the end of April, and would be gone already, if the YMCA weren't scrimping on other bills to pay the staff (who love what they do-that was obvious Monday morning--and are devoted to their patrons and to one another and who will be utterly lost when this facility closes its doors).

More than a few in the room grasped at straws that weren't really there. The 'if we could turn back the hands of time and do things differently' approach, which is fine and good but not real--except by noon yesterday the difference between surreal and cereal was hard to see. One person fretted that the last thing Norwich needed was another vacant building--and it was hard to argue with the truth of that observation. Others had come with their minds already made up and who had little use for any facts that didn't fit their conclusions.

The City of Norwich Comptroller, Mr. Ruffo, whom the Mayor had promised last week's meeting would review the YMCA's financial records, had little more than praise for the accuracy and candor of Mr. Lahan's assessment of the institution's finances and offered no silver lining, at least none that I could see. As I understood him, the YMCA has an immediate need for $800,000. This money won't make everything better. As a matter of fact, it won't make anything better. It will keep the YMCA on life support (though he is too kindhearted a person to use that term). I heard more than one speaker, I guess not mindful that in seven hours, the Norwich City Manager would offer the grimmest budget anyone currently in city government could ever imagine, insist 'the city must take over the Y' without any idea or hope of how to finance such an effort.

Mr. Lahan, speaking for not only the YMCA Board but everyone in the room and across the city, offered so much of what the Norwich YMCA offers to the community is too important to disappear. Efforts are underway to identify possible alternative providers of a stunning variety of outreaches--so many services that I think most of us would be amazed to learn 'the Y does that, too?', except they won't be doing it anymore.

I was struck by the reluctance of well-meaning people to accept a shift in their world that had resulted in a cherished childhood companion being no longer economically viable. Some spoke about our current economic situation and even as the rain pelted the long windows that line the Council chambers (they must be twenty feet tall, I marvel every time I attend a meeting at their size and number), I couldn't quite shake the sense that they thought, and think, there's a happy ending, somewhere, in all of this.

And maybe that's what faith is--what keeps you going when everything else tells you to stop. It can move mountains, but whether it can generate the sums of money the YMCA in Norwich needs remains to be seen and the days in which to see this are growing fewer, and sooner than we'd like will be gone, like the Y, forever.
-bill kenny