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Our opinions have been asked for and I will give mine. The Ganaraska Region Conservation Authority (GRCA) has asked if we want a skateboard board playground in James Coburn Park. My answer is simple, NO: Wrong place. I desperately want Council to allow our youth a place to skateboard but this location is not it. I believe there are many other better places, and I believe that the Parks & Recreation advisory committee made the wrong decision when given a report from the Director of operations. To make my point just imagine the green space opposite the Jack Rabbit Slim's parking lot, on William St. and then imagine a concrete pad 100 feet square (33 sq. metres) nestled against the trees and nudged up against the edge of the park, and standing out like a sore thumb occupying most of that green space. Green space is green space and the attraction of that park is the abundance of greenspace.
But back
to the report! The first conclusion is that the staff will only recommend
a temporary facility saying that the job of locating the permanent site
and design should be deferred until the results of the Recreational Master
Plan are in. Eleven sites were selected and the site in this park was ranked
as #7 and the time needed to get it set up was the longest (a
possible
eight weeks). How did this site get to be number #1?
Now everybody will have a personal favourite, mine was number #3, the land on D'Arcy St next to Legion Fields. It's on a bus route and there are only sixteen houses near the site. As well, many of the area children play in that field now. The report notes that this area is planned to be a parking lot for Legion Fields. So build the parking lot now, place the temporary skate board park on it and guess what: the skate board costs could be free. All we have to do is count the expense of building the parking lot as a prepaid expense for the expansion of Legion Fields and defer the cost of the skateboard park into the parking lot account. In this case because the money is going to be spent and is part of a future capital budget just move it around now.
So we have a location, we have the money, what's the problem? Get on with it!
I would like to ask why Council has dithered on this topic? Editorialists have railed, the public has wondered about the delay and the youth are very impatient. Not to make an expedient decision, when everybody realises the site may be moved again next year was a cop-out. The cop-out was made worse when the recommendation had to be taken to the GRCA. That guaranteed another delay. What will happen if the GRCA refuses permission? We will have lost eight weeks by then.
So in answer to the question "Tell us what you think" here's my answer. The location stinks and the time needed to get it up and running is too long! My message to the GRCA is simple: green space is greenspace and shouldn't be cluttered up with concrete pads and skateboard apparatus. Turn it down! If we couldn't have baseball diamonds in 1994 then we don't want skateboard pads in that park today! Put it in a totally unused space that is intended to be a parking lot in the future, Legion Fields.
And I have one more thing to say: if any of the youth are sufficiently moved to action by the inaction of Council one of them should run for a seat on Cobourg Council in the Fall elections. The great Canadian tradition of being elected to get something done hasn't been seen around here for a while. Perhaps one of the youth could show us the way. If they do I for one will cheer them on. >
What
a waste of time!