The debate about whether it is time to take a look at how the Columbus-Lowndes Recreation Authority serves the community could not have started much worse.
When Lowndes County Board of Supervisors President Harry Sanders informed Columbus mayor Robert Smith by letter his intention to ask the board to consider hiring a consultant to evaluate the CLRA, the mayor reacted with suspicion, claiming the study was simply a pretense to end the county and city’s inter-local agreement and create “recreation segregation.”
Sanders, meanwhile, painted a picture of unsafe city parks and said county residents are under-served by a lack of playing fields and facilities.
Wednesday, the mayor responded to Sanders’ letter in a more measured tone, suggesting any efforts to evaluate the CLRA should be a joint effort by the supervisors and city council, and asking the supervisors to table any plan to hire a consultant without the city’s participation.
We believe the mayor’s request is justified. As Smith pointed out in his letter, the CLRA is funded by both city and county taxes. For either governing body to move unilaterally only serves to needlessly politicize the subject and foster an atmosphere of distrust. City and county officials may not like each other. That’s their problem. As long as there is an inter-local agreement, they are obligated to work together.
Sanders is right, we believe, in asking for a consultant to evaluate the CLRA’s performance and suggest ways it can improve services and chart a course for its future. City residents and county residents alike deserve to have access to adequate facilities, programs and opportunities for recreation. Anything that pits one part of our community against another is ultimately bad for both.
No matter how you feel about the CLRA, pursuing this kind of study is helpful and should not be perceived as a threat to anyone in the community.
That is what is happening in Starkville, where the city is in the process of evaluating a master plan for the future of its parks.
Undoubtedly, there will be much public debate in Starkville as the city begins to put those plans into action. That is part of the process, too.
But whatever controversy may yet arise as Starkville weighs its choices about the future of its parks system, it has succeeded in one particularly important area: It has collected the data and solicited recommendations from experts, which means arguments can rise or fall based on objective data rather than on personality conflicts and the innuendo, suspicion or politics that go along with them.
We hope the leaders in Lowndes County and the city of Columbus will hit the re-set button on this issue and resolve to approach it in the spirit of cooperation.
Whatever decisions are made will have implications that will extend long after Sanders, Smith and the current supervisors and councilmen have left office. It would be unfortunate if those decisions were clouded by personal differences rather than careful study.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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