Not Sustainable — For Whom?
Local Utica legend Lynne Mishalanie created something extraordinary with Utica Monday Nite. For fifteen summers, nearly every public park in the city filled with music, vendors, and people every Monday night. Different neighborhoods hosted different themes, sounds, and gatherings. As a young person growing up in Utica, it was one of the most anticipated parts of the summer, a city-wide rhythm that made Utica feel alive, shared, and proud of itself.
What’s often forgotten is how modest the resources were.
Even accounting for inflation and the fact that this was more than a decade ago, the entire operating budget for a full summer of Utica Monday Nite was roughly equivalent to what local foundation executives now receive as a single Christmas bonus.
That comparison matters.
When people say community-driven initiatives like this are “not sustainable,” what they really mean is that it is not sustainable for their model and way of moving. It’s an admission of guilt. We already know you don’t know how to do this, your motivations are transactional, not rooted in responsibility, and requires insulation just to show up. Of course it doesn’t look sustainable from that vantage point. But that doesn’t make the work unsustainable, it makes that mindset incompatible with the work. No one can spend a million dollar budget and it not look good.
When genuinely innovative, community-centered projects emerge, it’s not because they’re perfectly funded or professionally packaged. It’s because capable people who know how to get things done simply do them. They work long hours. They build trust. They know the neighborhoods. They listen. They don’t need prestige or padding to justify the effort.
We can acknowledge that not everyone is capable of that level of work without pretending the work itself is unrealistic.
Calling it “unsustainable” is inaccurate.
It is unsustainable for you.
When a single-day promotional “prize bus” featuring oversized checks costs more than a week-long overnight summer camp in the Adirondacks for over 100 children, something is profoundly misaligned. That is not a funding problem. That is a values problem.
When one person can bring an entire city to life with $50,000 and relentless vision, why are we settling for leadership models that require chateaus, open bars, and layers of insulation from the communities they claim to serve?
This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about standards.
If we keep hiring people who cannot imagine doing meaningful work without comfort, prestige, and distance, we will keep labeling the most effective forms of community building as “unsustainable.”
Not because they are, but because you accept no other explanation.
