Kyle Cassidy wrote:
I think Sharrif already answered that very well. UCD's
accountable to the people who are paying for it to exist.
It's a private entity. In order for it to be beholden to
"the people who live in the area bounded by the UCD" it
would have to be funded by the public. Until that time,
they can do whatever they feel like as long as their
funders are happy and don't stop sending checks.
This does bring up an interesting point though, if the
NID had passed, UCD would be beholden to Jannie
Blackwell, who is the elected representative of the
people who live in the area bounded by the UCD.
I'll just add:
ucd states on their website precisely where their
boundaries are, and that's where everyone funding ucd
expects them to be servicing. and that's where ucd claims
all its credit, it's where ucd draws its statistics to write
up its report cards, etc.
this incident involved taking workers away from servicing an
area within the ucd boundaries to an area outside the ucd
boundaries. workers that included ucd staff as well as 2
penn students.
melani in her defense/support of ucd has often insisted
onlist that ucd doesn't service the penn campus, that ucd is
for US in the neighborhood, etc... and it's been pointed out
by ucd themselves that they can't adequately cover the
district as defined without much more $$ etc., so this
question of being 'beholden to the people who live in the
area bounded by the ucd' is an important one, and goes
beyond simply those who currently write the checks. we (all
of us in the neighborhood) are necessarily stakeholders, are
necessarily implicated in whatever ucd does. by ucd's own
admission.
and contrary to what you might think, our stakeholder
relationship with ucd becomes even more pronounced under a
nid, and this incident speaks volumes about what we might
expect if ucd was a nid. the whole issue of nid boundaries
becomes even more crucial -- for justifying a nid, for
defining how much $$ folks are assessed, for defining who
benefits and how much.
we could use this incident to think more thoughtfully about
the premise that ucd exists to service US, that they're
responsible to US, and how this US is served, allegations or
not.
..................
UNIVERSITY*CITOYEN
[aka laserbeam®]
[aka ray]
SERIAL LIAR. CALL FOR RATES.
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