Ball Fields Are Needed

Oak Park has a comprehensive, communitywide plan for parks and recreation. The underlying concepts of this plan were developed more than 10 years ago after extensive community input. A key feature of that plan is that Oak Canyon Community Park--in the center of the community--would be developed without the massive grading required for ball fields and other active recreation facilities. Instead, it would be developed to minimize the impacts on the sensitive ecology of the site.

This plan also meant that active recreation facilities needed by Oak Park’s residents would be scattered across the community in the neighborhood parks. Now, however, some people are trying to disrupt the careful balance of this plan by eliminating a third of the softball diamonds, a third of the soccer fields and a third of the tennis courts that are to be built in Oak Park.

While the critics now claim they are merely trying to protect the environment, at earlier public hearings they said they did not want the kinds of persons in their neighborhoods who would be attracted to the ball fields. In other words, they were condemning their neighbors and their neighbors’ children.

Oak Park needs Deerhill Park to be developed as planned. Those who moved into the community after those plans were developed should not be allowed to deprive the rest of us merely because they failed to investigate before they invested in their homes.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park