Recreation Commission Meeting this Wednesday – January 9, 2013

If you saw the article in this week’s New Hartford Independent, you know that the Brodie Park Study Committee is scheduled to present their findings at Wednesday’s Recreation Commission Meeting.

If you saw it, I’m sure you read what the Moores’ think is going to happen, which for the rest of us is an outcome found fair and equitable.  They state in their article that the Committee will recommend dividing the Brodie Park South area into three “zones” with different uses allowed.   They claim that the flat field will continue to be available for practice by youth sports.   I sincerely hope that is what they did, because unlike the Moores’, I was one of the folks in town during the time we bought the property and we watched our children practice soccer there in the late 1980’s.  I have some sense of what was intended.

We spent too much money on the property to turn it into a dog park.  With the data available about dog waste and pollution, a place far away from a watershed feeding a body as clean as West Hill Pond would be best.  There must be other properties more suited for that use.

I hope that children in town will continue to hold some weight when it comes to land usage choices, because children keep towns alive.

If you start limiting options for children, people with children won’t move here, or they’ll leave.  While some trumpet the loss of children in population numbers, it’s not a good sign for the longevity of the town or its businesses.

If all goes well with the folks this week, I will be at the meeting.  I hope to see you there.