The 'burbs

Games people play

   Sometimes when I write a column, I'll search the Web to see if anyone has trod this ground before. At best, you find that maybe you had an original thought, at worst you find out that a topic has been written to death.

   If you look up stories that have the words "kids, parents and coaches," the theme generally goes like this: Parents yell at kids, parents yell at coaches, parents yell at each other, coaches yell at kids, parents and each other, coaches and parents occasionally stop yelling long enough to assault other coaches and parents and kids and each other.

   You won't find a lot written about the joy of youth sports, of bonding with other parents, of watching kids have fun while they compete.

   I'm fortunate to know that's what has happened to me. Tell me what your experience has been.

   And maybe the next time you look up "kids, parents and coaches," you'll come across this.

   --- Bruce Andriatch

 

Back to nature

   Amherst might not be the hotbed of development that it was in the 1970s and 1980s, but you would think that 1,254 acres with access to four heavily traveled thoroughfares on the open market might get the attention of someone.

   But the people who fought to keep Nature View Park undeveloped, some of whom I spoke with for my column today, say that loss of potential property tax revenue is well worth the cost.

   There's no question that the park is a treasure, especially for people who like activities such as birding or hiking. But is that the best use for it? And the larger question is: Should municipalities be taking land and barring it from ever being developed?

   --- Bruce Andriatch

Going public

   Our story in Saturday's paper on municipal golf courses noted that they are struggling to survive in a more competitive environment. In my column today, I pointed to the Town of Hamburg as an example of one community that is managing to do pretty well in spite of those challenges.

   Golf courses do all kinds of things to attract players, from basic things like offering automated tee times to coupon specials. Hamburg is trying to keep its core players happy and is reaching out to residents of adjacent towns by offering them the chance to pay lower rates.

   What else could the municipal courses do to attract golfers?

  --- Bruce Andriatch

Getting Amherst courses up to par

   It's bad news all around for the Amherst-run golf courses. They're losing money. They're in shoddy shape. And now, the town wants golfers to cough up more money to help close the course operating deficits.

   Town Board members say that by raising fees modestly, the town will have more revenue to fix some of the more serious problems plaguing the courses - like the lack of an irrigation system at the Audubon Golf Course.

   But some worry golfers will go elsewhere to play their rounds.

   How bad are things on Amherst municipal courses? And is a fee increase necessary to make the needed improvements?

  --- Sandra Tan

End of the line for the trail

   The Town of Hamburg has secured a state grant of $243,000 and come up with plans to run a bicycle path on public property and right-of-ways through the Hoover Beach neighborhood.

   It would be part of a plan that would connect Buffalo to Evangola State Park, or Fort Niagara to Erie, Pa., for those with grander visions.

   But now, several years into the planning process, the association that represents Hoover Beach says it wants nothing to do with the project (which also had the bids come in at $100,000 more than expected, in part because of project delays).

   The opponents of the trail appear to have a majority on the Hamburg Town Board on their side, including the two new members who helped give Republican Supervisor Steven Walters his first majority.

   What do you think? Did residents wait too long to voice their opposition? Or was the previous Democratic Town Board majority running roughshod over Hoover Beach residents?

   --- Elmer Ploetz

Lace 'em up!

   When the Sabres played the Ice Bowl a couple of weeks ago, the television announcers spent a lot of time talking about pond hockey and how many of today's professionals got hooked on hockey by playing outside.

   That got me thinking about Ives Pond and wondering whether the City of Tonawanda still operated it.

   It was reassuring to find out that - weather permitting - the city still floods the fields and turns  them over to the ice skaters every winter.

   Mayor Ronald Pilozzi said the city is willing to shell out the money to make the rink every year. That belief, like the rink itself, seems like a throwback to an earlier era, when communities tried to provide recreational activities for kids.

   But should they be? Is that government's role, especially in this region with this economy? Or is it, as Pilozzi says, a small price to pay?

  --- Bruce Andriatch

She shoots ...

   It should come as no surprise that in a cold, hockey town like ours, girls want to be more like Ryan Miller than Kimmie Meissner.

   But even with roughly 900 girls ages 18 and under donning the hockey skates in Western New York alone, no Upstate New York public school has sponsored a girls varsity ice-hockey team between here and Skaneateles.

   Maybe we can blame Monroe County.

   Officials with Williamsville Central Schools said Tuesday they wanted to start a team, but couldn't find any regional competition. The same night, parents and teenage girls in Amherst Central Schools asked their district to consider sponsoring a team - but they face the same problem.

   Williamsville officials say they'd let their team travel as far east as the Rochester area if other districts would pick up the challenge to sponsor girls varsity ice hockey this fall. But so far, no one has.

   Girls varsity hockey is expected to take root in suburban districts first, where more parents are likely to have the resources to get their little girls engaged in such an expensive and time-consuming sport.

   So is the time ripe for varsity girls ice hockey? If not now, when?

  --- Sandra Tan

Southtowns exposure

   In a region where we take even Niagara Falls for granted, it's likely difficult for many of us to consider that the Southtowns are a tourism diamond in the rough. And that's what makes it easy to dismiss a report that says the region could somehow tap into the tourism market in a meaningful way.

   But if it's true than tens of millions of people visited a farm in the past year, why couldn't the agriculture-rich reaches of southern Erie County get a piece of that?

   --- Bruce Andriatch

   

Private funding in the public schools?

   High school students can choose from a laundry list of sports teams to join, but there is something about football. Entire communities rally around the football team, more so than any other scholastic sport.

   Maybe that's why a group in Holland is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to see to it that the small, mostly rural district gets a program for the first time in its history. The Holland Football Club has said to anyone who would listen that it would pay for the program by raising money from outside sources. There would be no impact on taxes because it would not be part of the school budget.

  It's worth at least wondering if this is a trend that might continue, this idea that taxpayers have reached a tipping point and are so averse to paying for anything else that new programs will have to be funded some other way. Something similar is happening in Orchard Park, where residents are trying to raise money to install a new artificial turf field so that it doesn't affect the budget.

   Is this what the future will look like in Western New York?

   --- Bruce Andriatch

A flight of fantasy in the Town of Tonawanda

   My big brother used to go up to the wings on the back tail of the airplane. So did other kids. Every time we went, I swore that I would join them. I never did. It was too high.

   That plane represents a powerful childhood memory for me and - apparently - for a lot of people. Where else could you go to actually climb on top of an airplane or slide down to the nose? Even after the town wisely chose to seal up the cockpit, you could still pretend you were flying.

   I drove past it a couple of weeks ago as I often do and was pleasantly surprised to see in this era of video games, laptop computers and TVs in every room, kids still jumped around on that plane just like I did.

   Some of them even go way up on the tail.

   Show-offs.

   --- Bruce Andriatch