To the editor:
Four years ago, there were 37 portable basketball goals in the city of Green Park. Today, there is one — mine. And I am in a legal battle to keep it.
As detailed in the pages of The Call in December 2023, Green Park officials have sought to remove any basketball goals located in a right-of-way. For decades, however, they were allowed with no objection. So, why do they want them removed? And why now?
City officials have given numerous reasons — code enforcement, public safety, liability — but those have been debunked. If not for those reasons, then why?
A clue may be found in the May 2021 minutes of the Board of Aldermen, when Green Park first decided to remove the goals. One alderman stated that allowing basketball goals “would appear to be giving permission for kids to play in the streets.” The minutes indicate that other aldermen nodded in agreement.
“We can’t have children playing in the streets.”
And that is the nub of the problem. Green Park does not want to see or hear children playing in their community, full stop.
There is a generation at the helm of our civic governments that does not remember it once played in the streets. They rode their bikes through their neighborhood. They set up hockey goals and baseball diamonds. They shot hoops on basketball goals. Children gathered to play sports together, getting needed exercise and building friendships. When cars came, watchful adults bellowed, “Car!” and children scurried to the sidewalk. Such were the signs of strong, healthy, safe communities.
Those we have elected to represent us, to govern our municipalities and make laws on our behalf, however, have forgotten their childhoods. They are now depriving our children of the privileges they had.
We live in a metropolitan area with worsening crime rates, rampant drug usage and rising homelessness, leaving few safe havens for children outdoors. We have an epidemic of childhood obesity, correlating with the decline of participation in youth and school sports. We have to pry our children off screens, which are engineered with algorithms to addict them to dopamine surges. We have frightening levels of teen self-harm and pornography usage, owing to the temptations of digital media.
All the literature we read urges parents to get children off screens and outdoors. Experts encourage “free-range parenting” so our children will learn independence, resourcefulness and responsibility. They warn of the dangers to public health, education levels and private industry if children never learn the basic social, emotional and, yes, physical skills generations of the past had.
Yet a municipality like Green Park, which has an influx of young families, is doing just the opposite: it is taking away opportunities for physical activity, community bonding and relationship building because it does not want the nuisance of children playing games in their view or in their hearing.
“We can’t have children playing in the streets.”
No, in fact, we can have children playing in the streets, and we should, under the watchful gaze of their parents and in the safety of their own neighborhoods, with friends and neighbors lending their eyes, too. That’s how strong, healthy, safe communities are built and sustained.
We can have children playing in the streets and we must, like we’ve had them playing safely on streets for generations — like many of you played on your streets, like those trying to remove the basketball goals from Green Park once played on their streets.
Rick Serina
Green Park
