Who's Behind Honesdale's People's Playground Project?

The mayor’s domestic partner has been working on Central Park since 2020. Her board member produced the soil report that took the playground out. She designed the replacement — funded through her partner’s employer.

Read Part 1 first: Necessary Repairs — the cover story, the science, the paid consultant the public was told was a volunteer, and the meeting minutes the borough hid for six months.

This is who did it.

Mayor Derek Williams works at the Wayne County Community Foundation. His domestic partner, Lisa Glover, sits on the board of the organization whose paid consultant produced the soil report that killed the playground. After the playground came out, Glover stood in front of council and proposed the People’s Playground Project to design the replacement. PPP fundraises through the WCCF — her partner’s employer.

None of these relationships were disclosed at any council meeting, in any media coverage, or in any public document.

That’s not the whole story. It’s not even close.

Part 5: It’s a club! You’re not in it.

Same bed. Same board. Same foundation.

Derek Williams. WCCF Community Engagement Manager. BS Geo-Environmental Studies, Shippensburg (2002–2006). WCAA artist. Former River Reporter columnist. Beat Hamill 822-348 in the November 2025 mayoral race.

Lisa Glover. Williams’s domestic partner. Bucks County native. Lehigh 2013, architecture. Created KitRex ($100K+ Kickstarter). Crafts and Activities Editor at Highlights for Children, 803 Church Street, Honesdale. Maker-in-Residence at the Stourbridge Project. Sits on the Known Grove board. Sits on the WCAA board. Co-founded the People’s Playground Project after the playground came out.

Glover was embedded in the governance of Central Park long before the zinc scare gave her a reason to redesign it. In 2020, she circulated a proposal to install a band shell in Central Park, citing the 1884 deed restrictions and arguing a band shell could fit under the deed’s allowance to “improve and ornament” rather than its prohibition on “buildings.” The full vision wasn’t approved; the borough went with the smaller stage portion.

In August 2021, Glover was on record at the Parks and Recreation Commission contesting another structure in the park — a Wayne County Creative Arts Council trailer. She called it “a defacto immovable structure designed to look like a moveable structure, taking advantage of a loophole.” Her words, in the borough’s own commission minutes. She was raising deed-compliance concerns four years before the playground story.

She was on the parks commission when the trees were dying. On Gruver’s board when he tested the soil. Running the WCAA stump art project when the stumps were carved. Leading the replacement project when the playground came out. Every stage of this story runs through Lisa Glover.

The PPP claims it “was born the moment the playground at Central Park came down.” Its founder has been working on Central Park for at least five years. The “born the moment” framing on the project’s own website does not survive the public record.

Kendra Nelson co-founded the PPP. Her resume, reviewed by Pocono Review, lists her as PPP’s Administrative Leadership and Fundraising Strategy Director from October 2025 to present. JD from UC Hastings. Former Director of Council Operations at Girl Scouts of Greater New York. Former staff attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid.

And — the load-bearing fact — Honesdale Parks and Recreation Commission Chair from April through October 2023. That’s the exact window the original DCED grant for an ADA-accessible Central Park playground was filed. The Grants Committee chair signed the application on May 31, 2023. State Rep. Jonathan Fritz wrote a support letter the same week. The application was for the same project — an “inclusive, universal play area first phase” — that the PPP is now designing. The grant wasn’t awarded.

Two years later, after the playground was removed and the contamination story collapsed under the DEP letter, Nelson resurfaced as a co-founder of the project picking up the same work on the same park. She also appears in earlier borough records under a previous name, Kendra Amick, on parks commission minutes from August 2021 — the same minutes where Glover called the WCCAC trailer a deed loophole. Nelson now appears alongside interim borough manager Kevin Kundratic in an April 2026 photo captioned “Honesdale Borough” personnel at a county homelessness meeting. The “grassroots” project’s co-founder is inside borough government.

Ryanne Jennings. WCCF CEO since October 2019. Temple University, Public Health. Wayne County native who returned from Philadelphia. Previously ran The Cooperage Project in Honesdale; left to run the WCCF; still sits on the Cooperage board. The WCCF now grants the Cooperage $6,000–$8,500 annually. Not disclosed on the 990. Jennings writes for the River Reporter — the only newspaper that has covered the playground story. Compensation: $96,813 in FY2025.

Under her tenure: assets from $5.6M to $14M+. Staff from one to six. County grants from $0 to $351,572. The 990 states the foundation “generally does not perform postaward monitoring” on $1.87 million disbursed.

Also in the room

Susan Shaffer came from the Stourbridge Project, where Glover was Maker-in-Residence. Hired as Honesdale’s first full-time borough manager in April 2024 at $80,000. Vanished from borough records. Kundratic — a Keystone Municipal Solutions contractor — is still listed as “interim.” No public explanation for Shaffer’s departure.

Connor Simon. WCCF Grant & Scholarship Manager. Sits on the WCAA board with Glover. Manages funds for the organizations behind the playground removal and replacement.

Eric Scott. Pool manager at the time of the October 7 Parks and Recreation Commission meeting. Now parks director. Present for the entire October 7 meeting, including the soil discussion. Has said nothing publicly.

Tiffany Rogers. Now council president. Led the censure of Hamill. At the October 27 meeting, she said she “read the minutes of the second meeting which she did not attend.” The October 7 minutes confirm she logged off the virtual call at 9 AM — before the soil analysis discussion. She was not present for the contamination conversation she used to justify punishing the councilor who was.

Every thread leads back to the same address.

Part 6: From zero county dollars to $351,000

FY2021 (pre-Williams mayoralty): 1 employee. $0 county grants. 21 funds. $5.6M assets.

FY2022: Raymond Hamill joins the WCCF board. Williams takes office.

FY2023: Williams goes on the WCCF payroll. “Other salaries” jump from $0 to $78,514. Same year: County of Wayne writes its first WCCF grant — $100,852. WCAA gets $96,500.

FY2025: 6 employees. $351,572 in county grants. $14M+ assets. 39 funds.

The mayor went on payroll. The county money started flowing.

The 990 question

Part VI, Line 2 of the 990 asks whether any officer, director, or key employee has a family or business relationship with another — or with any organization doing business with the WCCF. Every year, 2021 through 2025, the answer is “No.”

During those years: McAllister sat on both the WCCF board and borough council. Raymond Hamill sat on the WCCF board with a son on council and a former mayor in the family. Williams was on the foundation’s payroll while serving as mayor. Glover, his domestic partner, governed a managed fund. Jennings, the CEO, sat on the board of a foundation grantee. Simon, on staff, sat on the WCAA board — the WCAA that received $96,500 from WCCF in FY2023.

The “No” answer is hard to defend.

The grant story — corrected

This is where Pocono Review owes its readers a correction. Earlier coverage cited a $129,588 figure as playground money. That was a framing error. Per the borough’s own grant tracker, disclosed in the November 17, 2025 council work session minutes:

$400,000 LSA grant (announced December 2025): Borough Hall renovation. Not playground.
$129,588 MTF grant (announced January 2026): crosswalk striping and pedestrian beacons on Main and Church Streets. Not playground.
$92,558.15 LSA application for an ADA-accessible playground: filed in late 2025, pending in a delayed CFA cycle. Awards from the 2025 cycle are not expected until late 2026 at the earliest.
April 2025 DCNR Comprehensive Park Plan application for $36,625: pending.
2023 GTRP application for the original ADA playground design: not awarded.

In short: as of the night the council voted 5-2 to commit $400,000 to a playground project, no state, county, or federal grant for the playground has been awarded.

The playground money trail

Known Grove fund: WCCF. PPP fund: WCCF (donate link routes through wccfpa.fcsuite.com to fund ID 1726). Friends of Honesdale Parks fund: WCCF. The $2,000 Liberty Tree sapling that died in one week: funded through WCCF. WCCF does not publicly disclose individual fund balances. There is no playground line item in the borough’s 2026 budget.

In November 2025, the council had proposed an Earned Income Tax that would have generated approximately $400,000 a year in new revenue. After significant pushback, the council voted that tax down. The 2026 budget closed the resulting gap by reducing year-over-year carryover funds — a one-time fix.

Five months later, the same council voted to commit to a $400,000 playground project. Same dollar amount. Different decision.

Part 7: The press

Every prior article on the Central Park playground came from the River Reporter, of Narrowsburg, New York. Jennings — the WCCF CEO — writes for it. Williams wrote a column before becoming mayor. The borough website hosts a River Reporter “News Ambassador” recruitment ad. Editor Liam Mayo has a weekly segment on WJFF Radio Catskill. When the station covered the censure, reporter Tim Bruno sourced entirely from Mayo — same journalist citing himself.

On April 28, 2026, the River Reporter published its first piece on the Central Park playground story to carry an editor’s note disclosing a conflict of interest: “The reporter on this story works part time at a business owned by the partner of Luke Green, who served as a committee member with the PPP.”

Mayo wrote every prior piece on this story — eight in total, beginning October 26, 2025. None of the first seven carried the disclosure. The disclosure was added to the eighth and has not been retroactively appended to the others.

A reporter has a personal financial relationship with someone on the project that reporter has been covering for six months. Disclosure was eventually made — but only after the entire prior body of coverage had defined the public narrative.

Part 8: What the borough, the foundation, and the press never asked

On the playground. Where will the $400,000 come from? Is the borough committing general-fund money? Carryover funds? When will WCCF publicly disclose what has been raised in the PPP fund?

On the deed. Does the borough have a written legal opinion that a permanent bathroom, climbable Stourbridge Lion structure, and Irving Hill comply with the 1884 deed restrictions? How does the borough reconcile approving these structures with Glover’s own 2021 statements about a much smaller WCCAC trailer being a “defacto immovable structure” exploiting a deed loophole?

On the disclosures. When will the DEP letter clearing the soil be communicated to the parents of children who played on that mulch? When will the lead finding from Gruver’s October 7 verbal report be disclosed? When will the borough release the lead PPM reading, the lab that processed the samples, and the chain of custody documentation?

On Gruver. What did the borough pay Gruver and Known Grove between 2024 and 2025? What contract or work order language authorized the soil testing? Why did the borough not consult a state DCNR Service Forester or a Penn State Extension Urban Forester — public-employee experts available to municipalities at no cost?

On the conflicts. Why has the WCCF answered “No” on Form 990 Part VI Line 2 in years when the relationships above were active? When will Williams, Glover, Nelson, and the council members who voted on the PPP partnership and the April 27 expenditure file written conflict-of-interest disclosures? Does Williams’ Statement of Financial Interests disclose his WCCF employment?

On the censure. Will the council reconsider the censure in light of the October 7 minutes the public is now seeing? Will Tiffany Rogers — now council president — address the discrepancy between her account of the October 7 meeting and the borough secretary’s record showing she was not present for the soil discussion?

On Susan Shaffer. What happened to the borough’s first full-time manager? Why has the borough been operating under an interim contractor at higher cost ever since?

These are not gotcha questions. They are the questions the documents leave open. The public has standing to ask them. The borough has not answered them.

Read Part 1: Necessary Repairs — how Honesdale Borough tore out a children’s playground on a paid consultant’s unfinished report, kept the state’s letter clearing the soil from the public, and censured the one councilman who asked questions.

Pocono Review covers Wayne, Monroe, Pike, Carbon, Lackawanna, and Luzerne counties. Tips, documents, and on-the-record accounts: tips@poconoreview.com. Anonymity respected.

Pocono Review is committed to accuracy. If you believe any fact in this report is incorrect, email tips@poconoreview.com with the specific claim and your supporting documentation. Verified corrections will be published promptly.

Honesdale Central Park & The People Behind PPP – Part 2