PRYMCA is not Old Town Orono YMCA’s piggy bank

To the Editor;

The closing of the Piscataquis Regional YMCA as executed by the Old Town Orono Y board was frankly disgusting, cowardly, and pathetic. The board are acting as corporate raiders; ripping apart and selling piecemail a beloved community institution, gutting our local resources in order to prop up their own organization. When the PRYMCA agreed to the merger, our town trusted you: with our community’s health, fitness, children, ability to swim, our sense of community, and much more. They have taken this act of good faith and seen it as only an opportunity to steal from us. They then refused to even show their faces in Piscataquis County to account for their self-serving actions.

When we first moved to Dover-Foxcroft, the Y was our only source of child care for my wife and I, two working parents. It was the place where my youngest learned to swim. It’s where all of us have made friends. It built a sense of community and belonging for all who use it. I could go on, but it would probably fall on deaf ears. Let me say merely that the PRYMCA is about more than dollars and cents. The OTO Y board, as well as Scott Wilcox and Andrew Walker, still have a chance to show that they are as well. Do the right thing, return the facility, assets, and endowment to the people of Piscataquis County who worked so hard to build all of it.

Jon Knepp

Thompson Free Library director

Dover-Foxcroft