If mountain bikers seem a little aggressive lately, don't blame it on our poor summer weather so far.
No, our two-wheeled friends might be changing gears with a little more force after the proposed mountain bike skills park was shut out of the Sports Legacy Funds conversation a couple weeks ago.
Months and months of discussions and proposals finally came to a head as the final decision on the remaining $610,000 of the Sports Legacy Funds was made on June 21.
You can't really blame the mountain biking community for feeling miffed. Council decided the turf field will get $500,000, the Nordic sports park will get $110,000 and the mountain bike skills park will get zilch.
My question is why did council drag along supporters of the skills park through a long, arduous process only to leave them with absolutely nothing? It doesn't seem fair and it's really a slap in the face to the mountain biking community.
The entire Legacy Fund process has been a little strange, to say the least. Instead of focusing on one big project, it seems like council tried to give little chunks of the $750,000 to nearly every group in town.
To quote the band Everclear, it seems to me like they were trying to be "everything to everyone."
The BMX club, SORCA, the yacht club and the paddling club all received significant amounts of money early in the process. At the same time, a number of other groups got denied. It just really makes no sense to me why council seemed to lead supporters of the skills park on, only to leave them in the dust.
I understand that without the Winter Olympics, Squamish never would have received the money in the first place, but it's tough to say how much local interest there is in the sports legacy park. It seems like a good idea in theory but shouldn't anyone who likes Nordic sports already be using the Callaghan Valley? Is it really necessary to have two fairly similar facilities so close to each other?
At the very least, council should have split whatever was left over from the turf fields between the two remaining proposals. For those working on the skills park to spend so much time coming up with their proposal, only to see them get shut out on the last day, must have been incredibly disheartening.
Council tried to spread the money out and seems to have overlooked arguably the town's most popular sport.
The problem with trying to be everything to everyone is that often times you spread yourself too thin. It seems to me that in this case, council unfortunately did just that.
