To the editor:

After years of baseless basketball goal prosecution, the Green Park Board of Aldermen pledged to put two ordinances to a vote at its Sept. 15 council meeting: one to explicitly ban goals by the street, the other to allow them. 

Why does this matter so much? Imagine you have a house full of children. Some play basketball competitively. You buy a home with a steep driveway in a small, safe residential subdivision, on a cul-de-sac, with no through streets and little traffic. There are children playing, bikes on the sidewalk and, yes, basketball goals (nearly 40 around the city) by the street. 

Within a year of moving, everyone gets letters demanding goal removal. One neighbor’s goal has been up for decades, so he takes it to court. The prosecutor hears his side and drops the case. In the clear, right?

Six months later, another letter. You get an attorney and move to dismiss. On the day of the hearing, the city swaps out the old inapplicable code for a brand new inapplicable code. 

Other neighborhood parents join your cause, put up signs and speak at council meetings. These goals were permitted for decades. There were no safety incidents involving them. There were no public complaints about them. The city council admits they cannot find one relevant example in U.S. history or case law of government liability.

But you get answers like this from one alderwoman: “You can’t sell a house if there are basketball goals in the neighborhood.” “What if someone works nights and needs to sleep during the day?” “You can’t have a bunch of children gathering to play together and making noise.”  Or, best yet, “Just take them bowling.”

How would you respond as a parent to such flippancy? What self-respecting parent would sit by while a basic permission given to children is removed with no justification whatsoever? 

This is not about basketball goals. Having one is not an inalienable right. It is about whether our municipal government should be allowed to run roughshod over its citizens without considering their best interests or engaging them in decisions. What will the city do next? Pass a commercial tax without talking to businesses?

That’s why it matters to us. That’s why it should matter to you. Join us for the council meeting on Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. and tell the board to let the kids play.

Rick Serina

Green Park