Written by: Charles Davant, Blowing Rock
At first I was bewildered by Shane Fox’s attack on the Blowing Rock Civic Association. Then I realized he had insulted me and the several hundred members of the BRCA by attributing the personal views of one member of the organization to all of us. A bit of overreaction. The Civic Association has no position for or against the daycare. I have been a board member and attended every meeting for years. The BRCA and its’ board have never taken a position on the town daycare center. Personally, I think it’s a good idea.
I think Mr. Fox may have forgotten who he is supposed to be working for. As Town manager he is working for the residents of Blowing Rock as directed by the town council. He works with, not for, our excellent and sometimes underpaid town employees. As he ably points out only 1 of 80 employees live in Blowing Rock–and these folks pay no property taxes. They enjoy our parks, museum, gardens and playgrounds without actually contributing financially. It is a safe bet that members of BRCA contribute a thousand times more funds to our organizations than employees are able to. Trying to serve two masters, Shane?
Members of the BRCA are also members, often board members, of most of the organizations that make our town such a wonderful place to live. Should a member of the Garden Club make a comment about parking and Shane’s lack of leadership here, that he doesn’t like, will he refuse to deal with the club in general?
I read in Shane’s letter an outburst by someone feeling overwhelmed by the duties of his job. His “I just can’t deal with these issues, so I’ll ignore them” attitude doesn’t speak well for a professional supposedly working for all our residents. The fact that he cannot separate issues involving a few vocal members from the views of hundreds of other members is concerning.
I would suggest Shane step back and take a long look at the dozens of positive things BRCA does for Blowing Rock. He is obviously oblivious to BRCA’s involvement in multiple positive civic matters and BRCA is not going to stop working for our homeowners…
It would be prudent for him to walk back some of his comments and apologize to the hundreds of BRCA members he has insulted then get back to doing his job. Someone once said “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” You were doing a good job, before you stirred this up, let’s hope you can continue.
And these comments are my personal views alone and do not reflect the views of the BRCA or any of the other organizations I happen to belong to.
You must be logged in to post a comment.