POTSDAM — The Dick Murphy/Dalton Guyette Memorial Youth Project, which has been awarding north country children with a scholarship for good citizenship and a desire to participate, is looking to team up with the Potsdam Recreation Program.
Mrs. Murphy started the youth project 15 years ago with Cindy Talcott with the goal to help kids be a part of their community, without money or the lack thereof, being an obstacle to participation.
“We want to join forces with the rec department,” Mrs. Murphy said Monday in an interview with the Times. “I just feel like (Potsdam Recreation Director) Trey Smutz was all in, in making this happen, and he has been awesome and if we join forces with the rec department, this will keep it going for years and years to come.”
She said they created a new logo and have plans for fundraising and are “off to a really good start.”
The youth project has served the needs of local north country schoolchildren, providing scholarships for athletic, musical, and educational opportunities.
Mrs. Murphy, a teacher assistant at the Lawrence Avenue Elementary School Library, said recipients are children who have displayed good citizenship and a desire to participate and a committee of teachers being formed to choose the children eligible for the scholarship.
During the Dec. 10 Town Board meeting, Town Councilwoman Sarah L. Lister, who is on the Recreation Committee, told board members that there was a matter of determining how the funding raised would be used and allocated.
“Right now it lives with Helping Hands but they don’t want to do that anymore. They want to move that money and have it live with Potsdam Rec,” Ms. Lister said. “So what would that look like?”
Town Clerk Cindy J. Goliber said that, although it is a joint committee, the Rec Program is funded through the village and that was where the exploration should begin.
“Because they take care of the finances, that’s where I think it should begin,” Mrs. Goliber said. “You’re talking scholarships and so it is a whole new ballgame and to find out if that’s a legal type of thing that can be done through a municipality.”
Ms. Lister said there had also been consideration of reviving a version of the Friends of Pine Street, maybe as a nonprofit.
Town Attorney Francis P. Cappello said doing so could take about a year.
“But if you do it now and say you have a great year and started collecting money and getting money and money, they go back to the day you filed your petition, so that it becomes exempt,” Mr. Cappello said.
“It’s a long process but maybe it would be worthwhile to do it in the long run,” Ms. Lister said. “We’re in the very nascent stages of talking about what this would be like but we are feeling like it should be a legal entity where we would be collecting money.”
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