Throwing Away Dedicated and Knowledgeable Volunteers Will Hurt Our Community
The problems created by dissolving the Commission into an advisory board will be serious. But there is something else contained into the language of this change that is very disturbing.
The volunteers on the five member (currently 4 active members due to a vacancy unfilled by the Mayor since May) Shade Tree Commission are assets to the community. They have worked so hard to achieve the accomplishments described in the "Facts and Achievements" section of the website. All of the work to manage our community's trees has been done without these volunteers receiving compensation.
Knowing all of this, it is hard to digest the fact that the Township Committee has decided that their envisioned shade tree advisory board will only have 3 members in total instead of the current 5 members in totals that are on the Shade Tree Commission. In essence, they have decided to shrink the number of community forestry volunteers to 3.
Throwing away volunteers is extremely unhealthy for any government operation. Volunteers do the work for free. It eliminates the need for hiring more people or paying overtime and thus increasing costs.
A better and more diverse recommendation/decision would happen with 5 volunteers, instead of 3.
◇Volunteering enhances the social connections between different sectors and builds the bridges for governments.
◇Volunteering helps build a more cohesive, safer, stronger community, increase the social network between communities and neighborhood.
◇ Volunteering promotes people to be more active in civic engagement and concerned of citizenship.
This item alone just goes to show how bad this decision is for the community.
The volunteers on the five member (currently 4 active members due to a vacancy unfilled by the Mayor since May) Shade Tree Commission are assets to the community. They have worked so hard to achieve the accomplishments described in the "Facts and Achievements" section of the website. All of the work to manage our community's trees has been done without these volunteers receiving compensation.
Knowing all of this, it is hard to digest the fact that the Township Committee has decided that their envisioned shade tree advisory board will only have 3 members in total instead of the current 5 members in totals that are on the Shade Tree Commission. In essence, they have decided to shrink the number of community forestry volunteers to 3.
Throwing away volunteers is extremely unhealthy for any government operation. Volunteers do the work for free. It eliminates the need for hiring more people or paying overtime and thus increasing costs.
A better and more diverse recommendation/decision would happen with 5 volunteers, instead of 3.
◇Volunteering enhances the social connections between different sectors and builds the bridges for governments.
◇Volunteering helps build a more cohesive, safer, stronger community, increase the social network between communities and neighborhood.
◇ Volunteering promotes people to be more active in civic engagement and concerned of citizenship.
This item alone just goes to show how bad this decision is for the community.