Encinitas’ delays hurt today’s youth

North County Times – Escondido,CA,USA
By raising two athletic kids in Encinitas, I’m getting pretty
good at reading a Thomas Brothers Guide. I’ve learned where even the
most clandestine …

By raising two athletic kids in Encinitas, I’m getting pretty good at reading a Thomas Brothers Guide. I’ve learned where even the most clandestine elementary schools are here in Encinitas and our surrounding communities.

This is all too common for parents and coaches hauling kids all over town looking for a small patch of dirt and backstop to practice football, baseball, softball or soccer. What’s more disheartening is the city of Encinitas, with a population of more than 60,000, has not provided its community a multiuse sports complex since 1989, when the city paid $1 a year rent and volunteers donated the facilities, lights and landscaping for the Cardiff Sports Park.

Trying to redeem itself, the city made a big problem worse because of its ad nauseam community input meetings, talking about flower gardens and such, bungling the environmental impact study and failing to be prepared and take the offensive in litigation against the NIMBYs. Consequently, the future athletic fields at the Hall property have been put on the back burner for years.

Politicians are quick to pander to their constituents with talk about all the great things they are doing like new roads, fire station, libraries, walking paths and the like, but have only 44 acres of weeds to show for their efforts to relieve our shortage of playing fields.

I challenge the City Council to answer why a beautiful and prosperous coastal Southern California city with a healthy tax base and budget has such a pathetic record in supporting its kids when beautiful facilities are popping up all around us in neighboring communities. Even my fourth-grader and sixth-grader know something is wrong when we travel to neighboring communities’ new complexes and fields to play.

Meanwhile, the cellular antenna farm approved by the City Council at the Cardiff Sports Park is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for our city to spend on more bike paths.

The sad fact is the Hall property is the perfect location for a lighted sports facility, bordering a shopping center and the Interstate 5 freeway, but it will be too little too late for today’s thousands of kids, coaches, parents and youth organizations who make up the silent majority in this community. They will continue to make do and hustle the kids off to practice after school before the sun goes down.

It will be well over two decades before Encinitas has only its second multiuse facility available to the community —- a dismal and pathetic record given the booming economy, housing market and tax base this community has enjoyed. It hasn’t been lawsuits, lack of money or resources that has created the shortage of athletic fields in this community but a lack of leadership and resolve.

What we don’t need is any more input meetings, surveys, whining and carping. What we do need is the leadership in this town to exercise the commitment and desire of the coaches, parents and youth organizations and make building these lighted athletic fields a priority.

Troy Tinney lives in Cardiff by the Sea.