Park Rag’s Position on Basin Rec

With a meeting tonight by the Summit County Council on the Basin Rec Bond coming up, and the number of critical stories written over the past few weeks on the Basin Rec and the Bond, we wanted to clarify our position on the organization, bond offering, and our stories.

First, we like the people at Basin Rec and like the organization as a whole. We believe they have done many good things for the community. We are glad they are here and think they generally do a great job on day to day operations.

On the bond, we think it would have been better split into smaller bonds covering individual areas. We like things like open space but don’t like committing tax dollars to the “possibility” of an ice rink. It feels like these are packaged together on purpose to get less desirable items paid for.We really don’t know how we will vote on this yet.

As for our critical stories, there are a few different angles here. First, on the field turf potentially causing cancer, that scared us and had to be said. Second, on Jeremy Ranch, that brought up an angle we had never considered with Basin Rec. We always thought of open space as causing little individual issue. Our story on them converting a neighborhood field into a small dog park highlighted that it can cause problems. On the bond, there are thousand of dollars of marketing money being put into getting people to vote for this. While some of us involved in the Park Rag may end up voting for it, who is speaking for those who disagree? So we felt we needed to bring up issues to try to provide some balance to the conversation.

So, we don’t harbor any ill will against Basin Rec but we do think our citizens deserve as much information as possible. We won’t turn a blind eye and ignore potential issues just because they have been the darlings of the community for years. We hope you understand.