INSIDE

Elections 2005

Point Roberts Parks & Recreation District

1. What should the local parks board be doing more of, and what should they do less of?

Fred DeHaan
The parks district can’t do anything more than it is now, because of budget restraints. It should be less involved in the senior’s program.

Ted Mohr
My answer is that one thing we need to do more of is utilize our community center. So often I go by there and the place is dead. Wednesday and Friday (for a while at least we seniors keep the joint jumpin’) and Thursday evenings most every week some board or committee is using a small fraction of the space, but from my vantage point not much else seems to be going on.
Since we no longer have a bus that can take us to Riverport, maybe we could have a movie night once a week or so, where residents (or the library) could share a DVD or video. We might sell coffee and/or soda and popcorn and raise enough to pay for insurance and the light bill.
What we need less of is an attitude of saying “We can’t.”

2. Local residents have long complained that there needs to be more programs and even facilities for children and teens on the Point. How can the parks district contribute to a solution?

Fred DeHaan
In order to do more for the kids on the Point, or provide a facility for them, additional tax dollars or a bond levy would be needed to fund such a program. We do have sports equipment that could be used with a parent participation program, such as baseball.

Ted Mohr
Age appropriate films/DVDs in the previous answer on weekdays when school is out or Saturday morning or afternoon otherwise. Maybe a sock hop or some other type of dance once a month or so could be arranged at the center.

3. Should the local parks district take an active role in securing Lily Point property for a public park?

Fred DeHaan
No, because we still need a tax base. If the Lily Point property were to be made into a park, and parks don’t pay taxes, the shortcoming would become an additional burden on the taxpayers.

Ted Mohr
As we look around now and see fewer and fewer trees absorbing the carbon dioxide spewed by the hoards of Canadian motorists coming into the Point to buy cheap(er) gasoline and other assorted liquids we had better get off our butts now and do something to preserve what little forest we have left. As Rabbi Hillel so aptly put it: “If not now, when?”
There is only one now.