Reprinted from Crescent Woods Neighborhood Forum No. 234
By Wayne & Nancy Duerinch
Saturday morning. North end of Leddy Park. Ungraveled path. Largely undisturbed. Quiet. Trees block the Avenue noise. Skating rink filling up. Both co-existing without complaint. I thought about the Park Dept. How they make the citizens walk down a long sidewalk to park and get to the front door instead of moving the front door. I thought about their plan to alter the park for “golf” and about their bid for a penny. Just like it is wrong to award money to banks that have demonstrated mismanaged responsibilities, it’s wrong to give dollars to any Dept. that does the same.
What is the reason this jewel of a park should be thoroughly “sub-divided”? So the players can be closer to home! ? Tell me there aren’t 100 meadows in Chittenden county that would serve well. Course it would have to be purchased. Could be donated. Better we give away the park’s land to the Club? A warden of our park tells us we have enough treed parks. Which one of them is next to a lake AND has sandy beaches?
I thought. This is the furtive Dept that without full citizen input, proceeded. Later they offered inclusion but excluded likely opponents. The reason everybody knows what “ramrod” means is because it’s always going on. It often happens when a Dept has little oversight and acquires many buddies over the years. Then the “golf” forum is scheduled for the night of the local state governor candidates debate. Was all this done because it can?
I thought. This is the Dept that is so strapped for funds that it declines to maintain a 50-by-50 foot community garden but is eager to eventually take on the care of 18 golf lanes and equipment throughout the park currently requiring zero maintenance. Is it because it wants to?
I thought. This is the Dept that sifts the Leddy summer beach sand most days so you can’t run or barely walk on it. After the beach compacts and protects itself, it’s broken up again. Then exposed trash is left on the surface as the driver leaves behind loose sand primed to wash out to bay. Is it because the driver likes to take the machine in the water and he can?
I thought. This is the Dept that decries dumping in the park but that, until recently, dumped and plowed and bulldozed debris down the south bank of the brook at the rink’s North end. Or somebody snuck in with a dozer at night?
I thought. This is the Dept that each winter allows snow and ice to be rammed into the closed galvanized truck gate at the north entrance to Leddy at Dale Road, snapping the hinges, bending the piping; so that both gates now hang from loose chains into the road over any child playing there. The open pedestrian gate to the left offers access to the park and rink but only after climbing Everest. The driver then adds 6 feet of snow to the parking lot side of the same path and then goes down to block access to the often thawed and clear roadway that runs all the way to the beach itself. Because it can?
I thought. This is the Dept that draws up plans for a park gate thus demonstrating access to a foodstore, pays for the gateposts and hinge installation and then runs the fencing uninterrupted over the gate. Then that other Dept yearly paints a crosswalk to the gate with no access. Because they can?
I thought. These Depts decry graffiti but allow five seven inch diameter red circles across the road, saying they will wash off, which they should in a few months but don’t. Six inch circles are invisible? Then it allows cement or macadam knocked off shovels to set and stay on the curbs. That winter the new curb is scoured with a rusty plowblade that takes off a chunk the next because drivers can drive fast at night. Because they can?
I thought. This other Dept has the sweeper that breaks up dilapidated pavement into chunks the driver knows weren’t there before his first pass who then ignores them on the second. They have to do this to get the weeds. Chunks in the road are not a safety issue. But it exclaims bare sidewalks in the spring must be plowed for safety issues, leaving boulders of safe hard snow in each taxpayer’s drive. Because it can?
I thought. This other Dept this other winter had had citizen’s cars towed from a private exclusive drive and insisted it could do what it wanted. Call the car pound. That time the Dept got caught. Because it couldn’t. It became public.
I wish Mayor Kiss would walk faster, or at least change direction, and smile less. A school roof that fails in four years is not funny. We are told education dollars are precious but what experienced well-paid unrelated school representative showed up unannounced to observe during the work? Do we need more supervisors or supervisors on site with a camera while and after the contractor’s have gone home? Bring them in late and keep them late. For this they get more pay than their wards. How about if a snowplow driver damaged citizen property, he had to report it and any damage to the plow? And if a complaint was made, and the supervisor hadn’t already heard about it, wanted to know why? Should poor performance have consequences? What is the cost of damaged equipment per year?
Consider objecting to golf in that park. Consider voting NO on the penny simply on the grounds that the Depts are demonstrably unsupervised.
However someone should get credit for cleverness. To request a wee penny after the School Dept’s ludicrous effort, was pure genius. Unfortunately, cleverness doesn’t enhance my wife’s or my contribution to our city’s property base. Nor does it ensure proper management of more funds. When the Dept’s have demonstrated responsibility and efficiency and courtesy, double the incentive and give them two cents.
As for Leddy, is it disappointing jewels can be taken for granted and be unnoticed when they’re gone?
-Wayne C. Duerinck