A smart step
At Tuesday’s special meeting of the New Prague City Council, it was decided to do a survey of athletic facility needs for the community before going any further with planning for new facility needs.
The need for new fields for baseball and softball, soccer, lacrosse and other sports has been growing in recent years, along with the community. It’s been a long time since anything substantial was done in addressing these needs. The decision to study the matter and come up with a report by the end of the year is a good one.
There’s more to planning an athletic field than throwing the ball and players out on a flat piece of grass. Things such as parking, infrastructure and proximity to other amenities are important factors in making a decision on where and what kind of field should be built on a piece of land.
The same goes for the outdoor pool. There was an assumption by many that once the school district’s indoor pool opened, that the city’s pool would be “mothballed.” The aging structure has many issues and could go down at any time. A suggestion to form a committee now, rather than wait, is a good one because, as one city council members said, “We don’t want to play catch up.”