Letter - YMCA garage sale supported daycares

Editor’s note: The newspaper contacted the YMCA for a response to this letter. It’s printed below.

To the editor:

The Garage Sale that was held at the Alexandria Area YMCA was a tremendous success for the YMCA and I hope greatly benefited many home daycares in the Alexandria Area.

When the YMCA closed Young Peoples Place (Center East and Bethesda), a large inventory of child care related items were stored due to the fact that it was our intent to purchase as much new equipment as possible for the new Child Care Center. Due to our focus in opening our new facility, we did not have the opportunity to thoroughly review all items moved from those centers until we placed them in our parking lot for review on Friday, July 23, with the intent that our child care program and child watch programs may still want some of the items that were in storage. We also provided our full-time staff with the opportunity to purchase items at their priced value on Friday as well when we completed setting up for the garage sale.

We did not intend for individuals to show up on Friday while we were setting-up to review our inventory and knew full well that some of the items would be utilized for YMCA purposes and would not be available on Saturday when the sale was promoted to begin.

Very few items were retained by the YMCA, with the majority being sold over the course of the weekend to help support local home day cares. Although I realize that there were a few upset individuals, the problem would have been negated had people showed up on Saturday when the sale officially began. I’m quite certain that at many home garage sales, the owner decides differently on some items that they had intended on selling. It was not our intention, nor promoted, that an advance sneak-peek would be available. This was a tremendous event to support home daycares in our community and also help raise a few dollars to support the YMCA.

Jeff Bartholomew

YMCA director

Alexandria, MN

Tags: opinion, letters, ymca