Lost lakes vs $18 Million dollar baseball park



Laredoans enjoy the serenity of the West side's Lost Lakes

  

Pro8news tonight featured a juxtaposition of two very distinct recreation stories. One story centered on the groundbreaking ceremonies for the $18 million dollar baseball park. This was initially promised as an $8M dollar park that more than doubled in price. It seems to be favored by politicians and money grabbing non-Laredoans.

In all honesty, I must say that I voted against the LEC and against the baseball park. Both of these, in my opinion, are intended for the sole benefit of some bigwigs and a sliver of the Laredo population.  There are a great deal of kids in Laredo that never have attended a hockey game and probably will not attend any of the baseball games in the new park.

Going back to the Pro8news segment : one of the outsiders who duped the city into agreeing to build the park mentioned that "at the end of each game, they let the kids round the bases because it's their park". How ridiculous, for $18 million dollars, Laredo gets some outside opportunist giving our kids permission to run the bases and we're supposed to be impressed?  The sad part is that the Mayor, city manager's staff and the council probably were impressed with the proverbial bone thrown their way.

The other story was about the recently re-discoverd lost lakes located between downtown and the Rio Grande. This segment showed Father Bill Davis happily talking about how volunteers from his parish at San Francisco Xavier spent the last three Saturdays cleaning up an area for picnicking. The video showed a good turnout of families and kids clearly enjoying themselves at their picnic. Also, some people were shown kayaking. The price for this: Good old hard work and community cooperation. In other words, Priceless!

The sincerity of those enjoying their new found lakes made the $18 million crowd look silly in comparison.