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Posted
Oct. 25, 2002
| Skate
Park Yes; High Cost No |
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To the editor:
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| Virginia Gov. Mark Warner recently announced $858 million
in emergency spending cuts, including 1,837 State government
layoffs. |
| While Virginia is going broke and shutting down all Department
of Motor Vehicle offices one day a week, forcing colleges
to raise tuition or lay off staff members, and reducing many
community services by 10 percent, the Reston Community Center
(RCC) wants to build a $1 million skate park in Reston. |
| Does it make sense to use our tax dollars to build a "state-of-the-art"
skate park that, according to their own concept study, will
principally serve just 5 percent of our youth aged 6 to 17,
and 84 percent of them will be male? |
| While it might be nice to have a community skate park to
be enjoyed by all Restonians, do we really need to spend that
much of our tax dollars on such a structure when the rest
of our state is suffering from budget shortfalls? |
| There has to be a better, more palatable position. The RCC
has this money in its "reserves" from a recent $2.5 million
surplus (no doubt from the increase in our assessed property
values over the last few years). |
| The RCC must do something with this money. Well, how about
this: Why not spend some of our money to build a smaller,
less expensive skate park, and some of our money on other
endeavors, such as a dedicated computer lab or a nice playground.
Or, better yet, a large portion of that surplus should be
returned to the people who pay the bills--the District 5 taxpayer.
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| After all, isn't that what the federal government did when
they had a large surplus? |
| Julie Downey |
| Reston |
Copyright © 2003 The Herndon Publishing
Company
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