Posted on 10/18/2007 9:41:25 AM PDT by Pyro7480
The Boy Scouts of America's refusal to bend its rules to permit gay scouts will cost the organization's local chapter $200,000 a year if it wishes to keep its headquarters in a city-owned building on Logan Square.
Representatives of the Boy Scouts of America's Cradle of Liberty Council were notified that to remain in their 79-year-old landmark headquarters, they needed to pay the city a "fair market" rent, Fairmount Park Commission president Robert N.C. Nix said yesterday. Currently, the rent is $1 a year....
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
You're leaving out the part where the tenants negotiate their lease and the amount of rent they will pay in consideration of the improvements. The Scouts did this when they negotiated the lease in perpetuity, which the City is now breaking to please the homosexual City Solicitor. So if your marvelous property were rented to, say, IBM, and you broke your contract, your a$$ would be hauled into court and you would pay big time. But the Scouts, being non-profit, are over a barrel, and will need to cut programs for the poor and disadvantaged youngsters in order to meet your standards of commercial perfection. Congratulations. Hope it all continues to work out for you. Hope you never have any property that remains vacant and gets vandalized because your terms are so unreasonable that no one will rent from you. Tenancy is a relationship. The owner should never have all the power. That is tyranny.
I have a dog who they said would never be any good in the show ring because she was not interested and her ears stayed down no matter what I did short of surgery which is a no no on the particular breed until she was eight months old. I knew what was wrong. She is just a big dog and her ear flaps were just heavy as heck. The point is if I had stopped and listened to those stupids who spoke in the negative probably because they were jealous nothing would have ever happened. Well her ears are up and she is not only a domestic champion twice; she is an international champion. See, I believe in my dog. She is a massive female with great confirmation. She doesn’t like the ring; but with the right trainer/handler she is dynamite in the ring. So is her sister; like an angel going around the ring. You got to learn to pick out the gold. Yes, there are people that want to destroy this country; but there are better and more determined that want to keep America free. Stand strong in what you believe. It’s not always going to go your way; but if you don’t deter; it will one day.
I have always believed this. I ain’t getting paid to be harrassed by anyone. Now, if they want to pay me big bucks; I may listen. LOL
I wonder, that since at the time the scouts build the building, then donated it (and the land?) to the city in exchange for a payment of one dollar/yr. “in perpetuity” (probably to avoid taxes) that since the city wants to negate this agreement, should not the building and land be returned to the scouts as a result of this act.
I would think that the public should get on board and tell the city to give it back to the scouts.
Sounds like an issue that should be voted on, rather than the city spending taxpayers money on lawyers.
Can I quote you on that, Mayor Street?
That is clearly not the case. The city has offered to rent to the Scouts for $200,000/year. So clearly, the issue is not legal prohibitions against renting city land to organizations who "discriminate". Something else is at play here.
I went through the same thing 15 years ago in Philly in Scouts. One mother was a schoolteacher who wanted to bring a banana and a condom when the kids were around 10 years old. She was outvoted. Another was a male artist of some renown who was an atheist and who eventually removed his kid because of his objections to the moral values.
Unfortunately, in the City, mostly mothers ran the Boy Scout packs because there were so few fathers around, even among the professional lawyer/doctor class. But we did have a couple of good fathers who did stand up for what was right and wouldn't go along with nonsense. But that was 15 years ago, before the level of Christian-hatred has escalated as it now has.
I wasn't as clear as I should have been. According to the article the city can't continue to rent to an organization that discriminates at the dollar per year it had been charging. Apparently it can rent to anyone so long as they're paying fair market.
So "discrimination" is illegal at $1.00/year, but perfectly legal at $200,000/year. Do you still think "discrimination" is the issue in this case?
Perhaps "discrimination" is the City's excuse in this case.
"The land belongs to the City of Philadelphia but has been leased since 1928 for that token sum to the scouts, who built the landmark Beaux Arts building."
Sounds more like the Scouts were looking to build a headquarters back in the 1920's and the city came along and offered them the site for a buck as a way of supporting scouting. Unfortunately things change and the Scouts got caught up in it.
And have been for many, many decades. Philadelphia is utterly corrupt, from the sleazy working-class wardheelers fixing parking tickets to the retirees on City disability pensions spending their days free-lancing, or the hundreds of thousands avoiding taxes by working "under the table", to the outright wheeling and dealing of the Democrat machine politicians.
Until recently, there was an overall public hypocrisy about being good Catholics, staunch Episcopalians or righteous Jews. Not any more. The influx of gays into City Hall started in the 80s and has proceeded apace. One City manager my workplace dealt with told me she only hired other lesbians and gays. Imagine if a heterosexual City manager told someone he only hired men, or only hired straights.
Remember, Philadelphia is the City that gave us Abscam, a bribery scandal uncovered by the FBI, in which Rep. John Murtha was involved, but never indicted.
Hi TommyDale.
Your post is indicitive of the Marxist/collectivist mindset that has overtaken this nation. Under FEDERALISM, communities get to have a say in what they consider COMMUNITY VALUES, such as not allowing a peepshow on the same block with a battered-women's shelter. Not all law should come from the Supreme Court and force every community to bow to the ACLU, although that seems to be where you're heading with your one-size-fits-all logic.
Now there you go letting reason get in the way of ideological purity. Shame on you.
I can empathize with you on that. But, what goes around comes around and they will get theirs and it won’t be pretty.
Which brings me to God and ACLU. They want to pretend to go all intellectual on you about God; like man is somehow greater than God. Well, sorry suckers; but God is faith. He is in your heart and soul.
In other words, God is not an intellectual discussion.
Yes. By charging a buck a year the city is seen as supporting an organization that legally discriminates. By charging fair market value for the rent they they're treating the Boy Scouts the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. That seems to be the legal issue here.
If in fact the Boy Scouts do not meet the city's standard on discrimination then the city has the right to evict or to raise the rent.
Interesting choice of words you used.
You seem to be saying that this is not a "legal" issue, but instead is an issue of the City's "appearance". Nothing legally forbids the City from a $1.00/year rent, it just "appears" wrong.
If that is correct, then the Scouts may actually have legal recourse.
“Exactly. Why are the Boy Scouts on Welfare?”
You go to camp with the scouts you have, not the scouts you wished you had.
At one time in our culture, organizations which promoted the honest and moral development of young men into manhood and roles of leadership were so revered they were offered the use of buildings and office space for token amounts.
Now they are decried from the rooftops by those not fit to shine their shoes.
I was a Boy Scout, and I learned a lot. Those lessons apply throughout life.
It is a pity Philadelphia has chosen to attempt to extort a change in policy this way, after all it isn't about the rent, it is about the Boy Scouts saying "No." to homosexuals sharing a tent with someone's boy out in the boonies...
Read the article: "Unlike the scouts, public officials are also bound by a line of Supreme Court opinions barring taxpayer support of any group that discriminates." Charging under fair market rent constitutes supporting the group that is discriminating. Charging fair market rent is not. So it sounds like the city legally can't cut the scouts any slack.
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