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YMCA Teen Task ForceMonday9/30/08: The elephant in the room: MONEYIt seems like procrastination has always been a part of the human mind and is permanently put in there. In life, you are assigned to do some things ahead of time yet it never fails that you wait until the last minute. And of course as you’re trying to crunch time and finish the assignment, a thousand and one things either attempt or succeed in distracting you. So as I sit here trying to remember what exactly happened in our meeting from about three weeks ago with Noll & Tam I realize that once again procrastination has come back to bite me. As we all sat at the table awaiting the new design concepts that Noll & Tam were going to present to us, you could see some of the anticipation in our eyes. This was not the first concept they had showed us, but still just the general excitement of seeing another design was there. Or maybe the energy was just coming from the delicious cupcakes they had served us for snacks. But anyway they presented us two options. Option 1 seemed to be the ultimate favorite which made Option 2 to be in no one’s favor. Doesn't it always seem like when you have to choose between two things one just pops out at you and the other just fades to the side? Well that's how it felt at the meeting. Option 1 was creative and allowed us to build even more great ideas into it, including the idea of having a cafe on the roof, which by the way I strongly support and stand up for whole heartily. Which put Option 2 even more in the back burner. But as we further discussed Option 1 it seemed to cause a great white elephant in the room amongst the adults. MONEY!! And of course the ever so faithful issue of the amount of spaces in the parking lot. But yes money seems to be the root of all evil at time doesn't it? The problem was that Option 1 was going to cost us an extreme amount of money. I mean, of course this whole project is expensive but Option 1 sounded way over our budget. And as the money discussion arose the Teen Task Force became quite. It was like when a child is shopping with their parent and the parent says to them, “no we cannot buy that, it is too expensive” and the child begins to think of ways to bargain with the parent. Well the teens were the children and the adults were the parents. But no idea in this project is ever shutdown because of money. There are ways to work around it, especially when we come together and think of ways to do so. So once again we all depart from another meeting with these things pondering in our minds only to prepare to present our ideas at the next session. Want to know more about the Teen Center construction budget? |