Petition to save Clarence Darrow Park course in Warren, OH

[gcoghill]

I stumbled across this petition (http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/youngsrunDGC/index.html) and thought I would post this here. Seems the Clarence Darrow Park (Young's Run) (http://www.dgcoursereview.com/course.php?id=1125&mode=lnk) in Warren, OH is in danger of being torn out for a 'dog park'. I'm not exactly sure what a 'dog park' is, but tearing out a course in an area that has lots of open space to walk a dog in the surrounding property sounds short-sighted to me. It's not like there's an overabundance of disc golf courses everywhere.

Here's the text from the online petition:

In Warren, Ohio there is a great Disc Golf Course called Young's Run. The commissioner of Trumbull County has decided to remove part of the only 15 hole course to put in a dog park. This is the the largest course in Trumbull County and our Disc Golf club, The Trumbull County Disc Golf Associates, meet there every Saturday for our local scramble. We have worked very hard to get our course and we keep it very well maintained ourselves. Please sign this petition so that we can show not only the commissioner of Trumbull County, but everyone, that Disc Golf is not just a past time but a Sport that is up and coming and will be around for a long time! HELP SAVE YOUNG'S RUN!

[Three Putt]

Dog parks will continue to plague us in our search for open land for disc golf.

Originally intended for Urban areas where dogs trapped in apartments never get to run off a leash, dog parks have started popping up all over the place in suburban and rural areas. In the Chicago suburbs developers stopped building entry-level single-family homes. Every development was condos or huge McMansion that regular folks can't afford, and those young families in condos with no yards are still getting dogs, driving a demand for dog parks in places you would have never expected to see one.

Parks & recreation is often a "keeping up with the Jones" kind of profession. Once the City next to you has a community center, you have to build a bigger one. When they build an Aqua Park, you start a bond issue to build your own Aqua Park. When they put in a dog park, you start looking for some available space to build a dog park. This is driving the establishment of dog parks in weird rural areas that don't need them. Dog parks are a new "cool" thing for park departments to have on the list of facilities. They are popular with a lot of people and they don't cost much to establish and maintain...a cheap "feel good" for all. All except people who want to use the land for something else, like a disc golf hole.

Anyway, taxpayers with dogs outnumber taxpayers who play disc golf by a bunch, and when a group of 100 soccer moms and their whipped husbands show up at a park district meeting demanding that they rip out a couple of holes on that "Frisbee course I never see anyone playing that is a wast of our tax money" so that their dogs will have a place to sniff each others butts...well, lets just say they have more political pull than we do. As people demand dog parks in more and more places, soon every town will "have" to have a dog park (whether they really need one or not) and that puts the squeeze on other users who want access to land...users like us.

[gcoghill]

Bizarre. Last I checked, dogs were pretty much happy walking anywhere. I suppose if the town has no general park, then land appropriated by a disc golf course would be pounced upon to use as something else, and as you mentioned, the numbers of dog owners far outweighs disc golf players I am sure!

So much effort goes in to getitng a course built, to just tear it down so someone can walk their dog seems a waste. I guess from the opposite perspective, the same is true though.

The Warren course mentioned here is in no way in an urban environment, in fact the whole area is kind of in the sticks to be honest. A quick Google search shows a fair number of parks in the area as well.

I guess the recent increase in disc golf players at my home course is a good thing - despite the waiting, it probably ensures the course isn't going to get torn out.