BCA addresses Baldwin’s top 6 questions

The Baldwin Civic Association addressed its members’ six most popular questions at an upbeat meeting on April 26 at Baldwin High School. After hearing a presentation from Board of Education Trustees B.A. Schoen and Laura Williams encouraging everyone to participate in the school board election and budget vote May 15, 50 or so BCA members sat down in six groups to brainstorm Baldwin’s hottest topics.

The questions were compiled through the BCA’s Facebook page in response to a prompt by meeting moderator Sara Hill and the association’s co-presidents, Linda Degen and David Viana. BCA members were directed to join the discussion group that was taking up the issue dearest to their hearts, and a facilitator was appointed to catalog each group’s best ideas.

At the conclusion of the meeting, most of the participants said that they would have liked more time to discuss their issues, even though the leaders of each cluster had devised a few preliminary suggestions for tackling their central question. The following is a recap of the most pressing local concerns, and a few of the association’s early ideas for resolving them.

Question 1: How can we keep elected officials accountable for following through on their promises to revitalize Baldwin?

This committee was proctored by Maria Fernandez, and was probably the most divided in the room. Some members felt that local elected officials had generally kept their promises to Baldwin, while others, perhaps hyperbolically, advocated for “occupying their offices.”

“Most of us agreed that our current officials have failed Baldwin,” Fernandez said from the podium. “There’s a lack of faith that our current politicians will ever do anything. We feel we have to stop giving them a free ride. We have to stop letting them have their nice little photo ops. We can’t let them come here and make the same promises at every meeting and never hold their feet to the fire.”

Question 2: If one of the closed elementary schools in Baldwin becomes a community center, what are some programs or services you’d like to see offered?