No Rest for the Wicked

That's me! 

Who am I kidding?    Unless someone throws this gizmo out the window, can't stop... can't stop... it's my frigging crack pipe.

So...

My friend Da Horsey, had quite an exclusive yesterday about a possible lease violation over at the Boys & Girl's Club.  Simply put, the lease agreement with the City restricts the Lessee (B&G Club)  solely to using the space for conducting youth programs and "Lessee activities".  Subletting space and renovating the City-owned building to adapt to  the needs of  the subleter appears to be a blatant violation of their lease agreement.

You're right, Horsey!

The victims of such a violation are those the lease agreement was structured to protect: the kids of the Boys & Girls Club. When surrendering space means cutbacks in services and quality to the children the program serves, when surrendering space compromises the B&G's mission we've got a problem.

And here it is (an excerpt):

Club programs and services promote and enhance the development of boys and girls by instilling a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging and influence.  

Does someone care to explain how denying B&G Club kids use of their space, cutting off meals, squeezing them (literally) into smaller spaces and ejecting classes from the building "instills a sense of competence, usefulness, belonging and influence"?

Quite the OPPOSITE.

I'll bet the kids feel like crap about it.  I'll bet this kind of treatment does everything to undermine their sense of competence, usefulness, belonging and influence.

Taking it a step further, it smells like a caste system blessed by the politically-connected.  To GA.

What do I mean?

Rules are broken for the boutique project of the politically-connected, some of them USERS the subleter's service, and the population without resources ($$$) gets SCREWED.

A friend of mine who's a major donor to the B&G Clubs of America, with contacts on their (national) Board, is raging-pissed about what's going on.  My ears are still ringing from our last chat.  So this isn't going away.  Whether or not GA and Horsey blog it.

But I have blogged about it.  GA's earlier blog post on this is just the surface of a tale with more chapters.

This arrived in my Inbox today from a B&G parent:

The volunteer cooking instructor was Carmelo's wife.  She wanted to include the B&G kids, and I think she did, but the Hola parents didn't like the idea.  I think they may have dropped the cooking class.  

So, no hot meals, and no cooking class for the B&G kids.  I remember that hot meals were delivered, but (name redacted) said that they would heat them up sometimes in the oven.  They aren't getting any meals.  The kids would start eating them around 5-6 p.m. (name redacted) liked them - it was occasionally pasta with meat sauce, and other yummy stuff.  I usually picked her up before the kids were eating, but sometimes she'd eat it if she was hungry.

Thank you, B&G parent. For illuminating that the skipped afternoon meal was in fact, dinner. 

The more one knows of the goings-on, the worse it gets.