While Josh was brainstorming ideas about publicity a few weeks ago, concerned that he might plan a great event and have no one show up, he contacted the Potomac News about running a story on his project- which they did. The reporter and photographer were very nice. They came to his sound check when his band and another band brought all their equipment to make sure everything would work and to see where and how to set up. The story in the paper was very nice, but, unbeknown to us, caused some alarm in the local city offices.
Apparently they had just been discussing an incident in Baltimore where a girl's birthday party at a city park had to be shut down by the police, and they were all saying "Thank Heaven that didn't happen here!" The following morning the paper carried the story of Josh's Eagle Scout project and they all panicked, picturing thousands of rowdy teens running over the park and needing to be arrested.
Josh got a call that morning from the city council, and another from the chief of police. They wanted to meet with him to discuss the project. He and I went to the town hall that afternoon and met with two women from the city council and the chief of police. While they were all very nice, it was clear that they had already decided Joshua's event was not going to happen. The woman who had called the meeting kept saying, "It would have been a nice event..." Bad sign.
They had called the health department to inform them of our bake sale and to recommend it be inspected (and consequently shut down). They said there were not enough police in the city to patrol that sort of event. They said Josh needed permits and insurance and thousands of dollars to pay police, pull permits, and so on and so forth. It felt a bit like deja vu. (Similar thing happened with our home owner's association, after they had approved it)
So, today was the big day. The day we were going to be having a benefit concert. But Josh is going to work at a neighbor's house cleaning up their back yard, removing trees and cleaning out the garage. Which is a good thing to do! Just not what we were planning on.
On the bright side, how many young men get to meet with the chief of police and city council, besides the home owner's association board, all for one Eagle Scout project? Actually, he'll get to meet with the city council twice. They asked him to come back on June 2 to discuss the possibility of still having the concert. (For some reason, holding it at a later date might be better.) We'll see how that goes. As we were leaving the meeting, one of the women who had really sounded sorry about shutting this down said, "There will be a new head of the town council on June 1, but I'm sure it will still work out." Like I said- major deja vu!
I'm glad Josh is getting to really work for this award. I think, at some future point in his life, all these problems and set-backs will be seen by him as a great preparation time. In the mean time, I hope he can keep his chin up and make the best of a discouraging situation.
And if he ever does get his project to actually happen, I hope he has a whopping turn out, and is able to help tons of kids in Uganda.
=)
3 comments:
That is extremely unfortunate, it sounds like there was an unbelievable amount of planning for this.
Keep working at it though! I went through about 5 eagle projects before one of them worked out. Granted, none of them were near as large as Josh's
It's worth it.
Wow, how incredibly frusterating! And how sad for the kids in Uganda. I hope it all works out.
I hope that all this shutting-down will cause tons and tons of people to come, since they've been waiting for it for so long!
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