Before You Donate to People’s Playground Project
The Pocono Review — Opinion & Analysis
The following is editorial analysis, not a news report. Factual claims are sourced from public records and prior reporting. Analytical claims represent the author’s interpretation of documented events.
█ Fact
█ Speculation
Today, someone is going to ask you for money. Here’s what they’re not telling you.
The People’s Playground Project launches its fundraising campaign on June 4. The publicly announced goal: $400,000 to build the playground design borough council approved for Central Park. Before you open your wallet, here are a few things worth knowing.
Where your money goes
Every dollar you donate flows through the Wayne County Community Foundation. WCCF employs Mayor Derek Williams. Williams’ domestic partner, Lisa Glover, co-founded PPP and designed the replacement playground. PPP’s other co-founder, Kendra Nelson, is now Honesdale’s borough manager.
I don’t think it’s right to donate money to an unregistered “charity” ran by someone who runs another “charity,” the WCAA, that is also unregistered. If I can’t trust you to register your charity, I can’t trust you with my donations.
PPP isn’t registered. There’s no public disclosure of what they collect, what they keep, or what they pass along. Even once it reaches WCCF, there’s no public accounting of what gets taken off the top before a single dollar reaches a playground. There’s no way to see where your money goes.
That’s not an accident.
Why the old playground is gone
In October 2025, the borough removed the remaining playground equipment from Central Park. The justification was a verbal soil report from Keenan Gruver, a bookstore owner with no credentials in soil science, environmental assessment, or arboriculture. His report wasn’t finished. The lab results weren’t back. The borough removed the playground twelve days later.
One month after that, the PA Department of Environmental Protection sent the borough a letter: the soil does not exceed standards. The borough buried it on an agenda between a gas leak notice and a bank quote.
By the time anyone noticed, PPP was already holding design workshops.
Who’s watching the money
PPP is not registered with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations. You can search the database yourself. It returns nothing.
PPP claims shelter under WCCF’s tax-exempt status as a “fiscal sponsor.” Under IRS rules, that means WCCF is supposed to exercise independent oversight: approving expenditures, verifying spending, maintaining records. The entity responsible for that independence employs the mayor.
The body that would normally provide local oversight, Honesdale’s Parks and Recreation Commission, doesn’t exist anymore.
Why would any sitting official purposely, systematically destroy a park piece by piece on false pretense? There is only one logical explanation, in our opinion: someone is making a profit.
While we’re asking questions
At the same May 11, 2026 council meeting, borough council approved a $600,000 DEP Act 101 Section 902 Recycling Grant application for a composting grinder. The grant is a 90/10 match, meaning up to $540,000 in state funding.
We initially conflated this with the playground project (see correction below). But the questions are still worth asking. Where is this grinder going? Which parks or borough land will host a $600,000 composting operation? On July 6, 2020, the same meeting where Apple Grove’s playground was ordered removed, Mayor Williams submitted a “mulching program plan.” The parks have been systematically cleared of equipment, trees, and oversight. Now there’s $400,000 in playground fundraising and $600,000 in composting grants moving through the same meeting, managed by the same people. That’s over $1 million in park-related spending, and the public can’t see the books on any of it.
Before you donate, ask yourself two questions
Is PPP asking the community for more money than they actually need? And why are they doing it without registering?
At $400,000, PPP is well above the $25,000 threshold that requires registration with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Charitable Organizations. At that level, Pennsylvania requires financial statements reviewed or audited by a licensed CPA. Registration wouldn’t just put their name in a database. It would put an independent accountant’s eyes on every dollar.
Registration isn’t hard and it isn’t expensive. It’s a form, the BCO-10, signed by two officers. You attach your IRS 990, your financial statements, a description of what the money is for, and everything gets filed with the state and becomes publicly searchable. That’s what registration does. It lets someone outside the room see the books.
Pennsylvania takes this seriously. In the 2024–25 fiscal year alone, the state issued 22 consent agreements against organizations that solicited without registering, collecting $118,135 in fines. The law allows up to $1,000 per violation plus $100 per day the violation continues. Willful violations committed with intent to deceive are a first-degree misdemeanor: up to $10,000 and five years.
PPP didn’t skip registration because they forgot. They skipped it because registration would require exactly the kind of independent financial scrutiny that this entire structure was built to avoid.
Maybe the People Playground Project should register to be a proper charity before asking anyone for a dime.
Correction: An earlier version of this article conflated the $600,000 DEP recycling grant with PPP’s $400,000 playground fundraising goal. These are separate line items from the same May 11, 2026 council meeting. The recycling grant is for a composting grinder approved under DEP Act 101, Section 902. The $400,000 playground figure comes from PPP’s April 27 public presentation. We got it wrong, we learned from a reader comment, and we corrected it. The same questions about oversight, registration, and accountability apply to both.