Rachel Carson Meadow Still Not Safe

By Carole A. Barth

The news is full of the County budget crisis. Everywhere you turn, there’s talk of cuts in schools, police, or environmental programs.

You might think, “Gee, that’s terrible, but at least now they won’t destroy the meadow to build a soccer field.” (For those of you just tuning in, the County plans to bulldoze and fill the undeveloped portion of North Four Corners Park, leveling out the 30-plus foot elevation difference to build a soccer field and 50-car parking lot. This would destroy most of the trees, including a magnificent 180 year-old walnut tree. At the same time, the existing youth soccer field in the developed portion of the park would be removed and planted with a few saplings. The entire project would cost at least $5 million.)

Sadly, you’d be wrong. Most capital improvement projects are debt-funded. In other words, bonds are issued to pay for them. So the theory is, even if revenues are way down, you can keep on building. Moreover, because the soccer field wouldn’t be constructed until 2014, it can be argued that times will be better by then.

Still, with a rapidly growing maintenance backlog, plus a rapidly growing structural deficit, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to add new facilities. In fact, working with a local soccer club, we identified 10 nearby adult soccer fields that could be renovated for the cost of building this one new field.

So the bottom line is, we have to continue our efforts to get the Council to remove this project from the capital budget. ■