OrilliaMatters welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a news release about the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka creating a community fund, published Dec. 2.
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Some of you will remember that in April I wrote an article for OrilliaMatters lamenting that the $2.9 million in net proceeds from the sale of the Skid Watson YMCA in Orillia had disappeared into the general revenues of the Simcoe/Muskoka YMCA.
The same thing happened with the proceeds of the YMCA’s Geneva Park facilities.
Those moves left a bad taste in my mouth.
At that time the Simcoe/Muskoka YMCA was embarked upon a fundraising drive to build “a new kind of Y in downtown Barrie,” also known as “the Y we need for the Barrie we want.”
Since that time, John Mundell, Jimmy Dykes, Jim Watts and I met with the chair of the Simcoe/Muskoka YMCA and the, CEO Jill Tettmann, to discuss the situation.
We suggested a “made-in-Orillia” solution for the use of the $2.9 million from the sale of the Skid Watson YMCA property, which would give the citizens of Orillia, Ramara, Severn and Oro-Medonte, who had donated to the YMCA in the past, a tangible legacy. It consisted of paying for solar panels to heat the Orillia Recreation Centre, using the donor walls from the Skid Watson building to build a memorial to the legacy of the YMCA in Orillia at the recreation centre, and using the balance to fund memberships for underprivileged members.
On Nov. 30, 2022, the Simcoe/Muskoka YMCA held its annual meeting and filed its annual financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2022. The financial statements included an addendum advising that a “Forward Together Fund” of $12 million had been established from the sale of the Geneva Park property.
There is no mention of the $2.9 million from the sale of the Skid Watson YMCA property in Orillia. That has been swallowed and Orillia and surrounding communities who contributed that money will get no return on their investments over the years.
Contrast these actions with those of the Royal Canadian Legion, which recently closed the Warminster legion and sold the property. Eight hundred thousand dollars of the proceeds went back into the community. Among the beneficiaries were the Oro-Medonte fire department, the Sharing Place Food Centre, Orillia Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital and the Orillia Youth Centre.
The bad taste remains in my mouth. In future my donations will be reserved for organizations that have a sense of loyalty to the community that gives the funds rather than an organization that purports to represent all of the District Municipality of Muskoka and Simcoe County but puts its focus on “the Y we need for the Barrie we want.”
Doug Lewis
Orillia
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