Letter: Pump Track

Editor, The Friday Flyer

Because I don’t want a bicycle track or a skateboard park developed on the natural area behind me, the POA Board mocked me with the phrase “not in my backyard.” Their implication is that I really do want their expensive pet project, just not in my own backyard. This manipulative phrase is the board’s tool to silence us, discount our opinions as “biased” and “selfish,” and remove us as an obstacle. How dare we voice our concern over dramatic and negative changes near our own homes, they assert. Think of the greater good, they assert. One can almost sense that more weight is given to a resident across the lake when it comes to what happens adjacent to my property because they are “objective.” Here’s a novel thought: Residents’ concerns about plans that affect property adjacent to their own should be given more weight, not less. That concept used to be called common sense. It’s a good thing to keep your corner of the world the best it can be and to denounce bad ideas proposed for your neighborhood. But it infuriates ego-driven, power-hungry, wannabe politicians who are legacy-building. I’d like the POA Board to view residents not just as insignificant single votes in numbers too small to affect their re-election but as real people with real concerns who have every right and even a duty to care about projects that affect them directly and impact their homes’ values negatively. The next time a board member sarcastically says, “You’re just concerned about what we do in your own backyard,” answer, “Exactly.”

Dan Fitzgerald