Encourage, Help Foothills Complete Final Half-Step

1-15-10

Granted, the Foothills Performing Arts Center is in a bit of a tight spot.  But that calls for calm deliberation, not overheated rhetoric.
Look at the accomplishment:  An $8 million state-of-the-art facility is a few hundred thousand dollars away from completion.
Already, The Atrium of the new theater is a viable venue for weddings, receptions, dances and such events as the second annual The Foothills Bridal Expo 2010, which packed ‘em in Sunday, Jan. 10.
The board of directors consists of unpaid volunteers, and they are considerable ones.  Gene Bettiol, Arnie Drogen, key administrators at both colleges, attorneys, businesspeople.
The departed executive director, Jennifer McDowall, is a formidable personality and a creative one, but that chapter has closed.
The gathering Monday evening, Jan. 11, at the Autumn Cafe, smacked of the first step of the grieving process, necessary, but irrelevant as far as Foothills’ future.
One attendee was quoted as saying of the board of directors, “They robbed us; the public should be outraged.”  That’s wrong on several levels.
First, most of the $8 million is state money, a boon, not a detriment to “us,” the people of Oneonta.
Second, the current board stepped up to a daunting challenge when Peter Macris, Foothills’ (and Glimmerglass Opera’s) founder and a considerable fundraiser and impresario, simply ran out of time:  Age and ill-health required him to step aside.
The directors – particularly Doug Reeser, a retired engineer who filled the vacant helm, but all of them – should be honored, not decried.
Calls to state Sen. Jim Seward for the board’s dismissal are nonsense.  Who would want to step in?
That said, the community’s leaders – Seward, Mayor Miller, the college presidents, the arts community among them – should engage the Foothills directors in this conversation:  What can we do to help?
Happily, one report said Monday’s meeting reflected support for the theater’s completion, for promoting Foothills in other venues, and for arts groups sharing resources.
It’s a truism:  If we don’t appreciate what we have, we lose it.  The National Soccer Hall of Fame is a case in point.
A better story:  The community got behind a struggling Hartwick in the 1920s and assured its successful move to Oyaron Hill.
That’s a better model for how this scenario should play out.