To CAP It Off

Ed note: this is a fleshed out version of  comment that was posted on Sunday.

You have a holiday weekend and come back on Sunday morning and read the
papers only to find out that the county is pissing on starving people.
Well, not exactly…

The NYJN reported in an article, “Legislators won’t renew food pantry’s
lease”, that the county was not going to renew a lease agreement with
the Putnam Community Action Program (CAP) for space the program is using
in Brewster and gave the impression that CAP was being evicted. If it
were that simple, the Journal News might have gotten the story right,
but in typical JN style they’ve mangled the facts and created a “there”
that is not.

Here’s the deal: CAP leases 1400 sq ft of office space on the top floor
of a county owned building at 121 Main Street in Brewster from which
they run their food pantry program. The building was bought and
renovated years ago as expansion space for records storage and taxpayers
dollars were spent doing just that. To recover some of those costs and
provide local services, the county has leased out small spaces in that
building which are not being used for record storage. In CAP’s case
that’s 1400 sq ft. of space.

Okay… here’s where it gets good:

About a year and a little more ago, CAP noticed there was 750 sq ft
of unused storage space on the ground floor of the building and asked the
county if they could use it for food storage. As the county wasn’t using
that space as yet for records they said, ’sure, until we need it.’ In
the intervening time the county found that rats and mice and other
what-have-you have found their way into that space and stored documents
have been damaged along with non-canned food stuffs. Not a lot, mind
you, but enough to warrant attention.

Logic says that you don’t store food and paper records long-term in the
same space and whoever allowed that in the first place wasn’t thinking
very clearly. But an effort was made on the part of the County to
accommodate an important program and though it worked for a while, the
county now needs to recover that space and better safeguard our records.

This shouldn’t be news to CAP as they knew from the start this extra 750
sq ft was a temporary, short term, be a good neighbor type of deal and
yet they’ve done nothing (at least to my knowledge) over the past year
to seek a permanent solution for themselves… and now they blame the
county. Huh.

CAP Director Rosemarie Bahr says in the article,

“For Putnam County legislators to contemplate limiting our services
rather than to help us expand our services – at a time when our
community needs us the most and on the eve of our most successful
Thanksgiving – is very unsettling,” she said. “They say it is a space
issue, but for us it is a service issue.”

Well, it is a space issue, not a service issue. An issue, to which CAP
has been fully aware since the beginning and has an obligation – to
itself – to have resolved by this time. CAP’s original 1400 sq ft of
space is not in contention here, even though they, their supporters and
the JN have made it seem so.

CAP insisted at the Physical Services Committee meeting last week that
they *had* to have the space in order to function, putting pressure on
the taxpayers of the county to find a solution for them. This would be
one thing had they been unaware of the pending loss of that borrowed
space, but they’ve known for a year this day was coming.

This is not, as some would have it, an issue of “let the county store
their records elsewhere”. No, it’s gone too far for that. 121 Main
Street is where the county had every intention of storing our records
and thy should follow through with their plans. This is also not an
issue of “records being more important than the poor”. It’s far from it.
This is also not an issue of whether the services CAP provides are
important or not. Of course they are! But that’s not part of this
discussion though too many people have made it so in an attempt to toss
logic out the window and replace it with guilt.

Instead, what we have here is an attempt by a social service agency to
use emotional pressure, indefensible reporting in the Journal News, and
semantics to force their way into a taxpayer funded building designed
specifically for a different purpose. If the county bends and allows
them to succeed, then any agency renting space from any municipality can
play the same game as CAP and I don’t think we want to go down that
road… do we?

Now we have the public screaming at the county on false information.
Margaret Flannery writes on the B10509 list,

“I also called Bob Bondi’s office and left a message on the
answering machine expressing my alarm at the food pantry being
displaced with nowhere to go.”

The food pantry isn’t being displaced, plain and simple. Moreover, CAP
itself is in on the action. Their website reads:

“The [Physical Services] committee said that the space was needed
for the storage of county records, implying that they value the
storage of archival records more than they care about the provision
of food and services to the county’s poor.”

And again, it just ain’t so.

For all the effort expended on this, CAP and their supporters should
have been looking for a permanent space for themselves the moment they
were told they could *borrow* a little space from the county and I urge
them now to refocus their energies in that direction. As much as I hate
to say it, the county is not the bad guy here and it’s just plain wrong
to say they are. For each person who has signed a petition, send a
hundred bucks to CAP, as that direct action would be a lot more helpful.

CAP has to give back the space they were borrowing and they need to do
so with grace – and an apology – to the county. As stated earlier, the
reason 121 Main was bought in the first place was specifically for the
storage of records in a climate controlled building and the money was
spent to make it so. I am sure CAP can find another storage space nearby
and I’m sure the county can help them do it… if CAP and their most
vocal supporters have not burned those bridges.

The NYJN should take hard look at the emotional distress they’ve caused
CAP, the Legislature and the hungry, and see if it was worth it. I’m
sure the article sold a lot of papers and scored hundreds of hits to
their website so I’m guessing they think it was.

For the Journal News to write such an article only underscores the need
for an independent media source in this county and you’re reading it
now. Help keep it going.

Tomorrow (if I can find the energy): Tilly Foster, George Whipple and a
Contract You’re Not Gong to Believe!

Tags: politics, Putnam County, Social Services