By Jim Buck
At tonight’s meeting of the East Buffalo Township Supervisors, Char Gray will take the seat she won in the November election.
A few days before the election, Gray sent a campaign mailing to all East Buffalo Township residents. Along with a long letter and a brief campaign brochure was a single sheet with the heading “A Special Message Regarding My Support of the Buffalo Valley Recreation Authority.”
As Gray herself makes clear the “special message” was added to the mailing because she felt her opponent, Tony Stafford, had had some success in sowing doubts about her support for the Buffalo Valley Recreation Authority.
Tonight’s supervisors meeting will give Gray an even better chance to show whether or not she is really committed to supporting BVRA. Let’s look at Gray’s “special message” in its entirety.
“In the final days of the campaign, I am hearing troubling rumors around town that suggest I want to eliminate the Buffalo Valley Recreation Authority (BVRA). Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe BVRA provides essential programming for the community.”
“As you will read in my enclosed letter and in my literature, I fully support access to safe and healthy recreation. In fact, I am one of the founders of the Turtle Creek Park Association and helped reopen the wonderful dog park and hiking/biking trails.”
“As a Supervisor, I will support BVRA’s mission and look for ways to provide recreational opportunities for our community. As a Supervisor, I will be held accountable for EBT tax dollars spent on recreation and in support of BVRA. I am committed to providing proper oversight and and leadership to ensure our recreation dollars met [sic] our community’s recreation needs.”
As someone once said, “The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.”
Gray’s mailing may have successfully created the impression that she would not want to see BVRA weakened, but when you look closely, there is nothing here that would be inconsistent with the action that the current board of supervisors (in split votes) has already taken. For example, taking the stance that the current recreational agreement is unfair to East Buffalo Township and must be renegotiated so that EBT and Lewisburg will each wind up paying 50 percent.
Note that Gray says she doesn’t want to “eliminate” BVRA, not that she supports it in its current form. She says she supports BVRA’s “mission” and supports “access to … recreation,” which is not exactly the same thing as supporting BVRA as the vehicle for cooperation between EBT and Lewisburg in the realm of recreation.
Taken together with other statements in her campaign literature, Gray’s stance on BVRA is equivocal enough that it is not even inconsistent with some of the wilder statements made by the current supervisors about keeping the township out of any written recreation agreement with Lewisburg, targeting EBT recreation donations toward some of BVRA’s operations while defunding operations that “unfairly” compete with the Miller Center (open for only a couple of months now) and the YMCA (which may or may not come to the EBT area at some future date).
But Gray and other sitting supervisors also give hints that they want to open a new chapter in the history of EBT’s long-neglected parks, which (like many Lewisburg borough parks) are operated independently from BVRA. After the election, township officials began to float the idea of developing open land owned by EBT into parks: exs, a parcel on Jean Blvd (my street) and a much larger parcel in the Spruce Hills development.
Gray’s letter seems to hint that this might be accomplished at no cost to the taxpayers, through volunteer effort and charitable private donations, as was the case with the Turtle Creek Dog Park. It would also be great for EBT to improve the sad condition of the dugouts and concession/storage building at its ballfield on Fairground Road.
However, I believe a healthy amount of skepticism is in order with regard to the claim that great changes will come about with zero additional cost to the taxpayers. That’s the sort of pledge that looks great in a piece of campaign literature, but which could prove challenging in the long run.
And defunding BVRA in order to build new amenities entirely under EBT control is a truly bad idea. What parts of BVRA would the EBT want to defund in order to create its new parks? The Rail Trail? The Community Pool? The St Mary Park? Indoor recreation programs such as the Gymnastics Center, which contribute essential revenue that allows BVRA to support the staff that does all the work to keep the organization as a whole going?
BVRA executive director Stacey Sommerfield has said publicly that the actions and statements coming from the EBT supervisors have already caused “chaos,” by throwing the level and form of future EBT financial support into doubt and by throwing the ability of the two municipalities to cooperate on anything into doubt as well.
After all, this issue with BVRA is part of a wider context. East Buffalo is already in a sharp dispute with Lewisburg over the level of funding it will provide to the Regional Police Department. It is also in the process of negotiating a new agreement with the borough as well as other municipalities for funding the William Cameron Engine Company.
Doubtless, we’ll find out more about all of this at tonight’s supervisors meeting, which will be held starting at 5:30 p.m. in the East Buffalo Twp municipal building, 589 Fairground Rd.
All three supervisors have had a good deal to say about BVRA and their attitude toward cooperative agreements with Lewisburg, and they’ll say more tonight. I hope they will also listen to what their constituents are saying on these and other issues.
Public Parks and Rec 