Speaking of my old hometown…

A news item about Salisbury being one of the “100 Best Communities for Young People” came out awhile back and got a little comment on the local blogs. But that was for the 2005 competition. Today it’s been announced that Salisbury and Wicomico County is a repeat winner. What’s funny to me is that another one of the hundred was Toledo, Ohio – for a completely different (and to me more tangible) reason.

Both of these are from the America’s Promise website, with grammatical errors fixed by yours truly:

Wicomico County and Salisbury are being selected as one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People, in part, because of the launch of The Youth Leadership Academy to start…engaging youth more fully in our community as the policy makers, as well as service providers. Seventy youth participated and created lasting foot prints in the community including a 14 ft positive message graffiti mural on display at a local sports center, a public service announcement aired in cable TV promoting healthy habits, and a community poster denoting “Safe Communities.”

Now would it not be ironic if one of these seventy darlings was among those who sprayed graffiti all over downtown? That would certainly be a “lasting foot print.” On the other hand…

Toledo is one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People, in part, because of “Building for Success,” the single largest building project in the history of the Toledo (Public Schools). Through a city-school partnership, Toledo park land was exchanged to rebuild and renovate all district schools, in order to improve educational opportunities for (future) generations.

Aside from the fact that the America’s Promise folks must have butchered up the description, this actually was a very good idea. One of my first posts way back at the beginning of monoblogue talked about the old school I lived by. As it turns out, this particular school is one that will remain standing for some other use but there’s a lot of potential vest-pocket parkland that would be created by this program. Obviously some net parkland would be lost but there’s two benefits I see to this initiative:

First of all, the neighborhood gets a new park with new equipment and one that’s properly planned instead of being haphazardly laid out – in other words, the open space would be utilized better. Secondly, the school system saves a LOT of money on land acquisition and doesn’t have to deal with the costs of demolition or possible brownfield abatement. The money can be plowed into better facilities. (Well, at least I hope that’s what they did!)

Unfortunately, this concept doesn’t translate well to our situation with Bennett High School because there’s no large amount of parkland I’m aware of in Salisbury. Additionally, many feel that a better location for the school would be in the eastern end of the county so a parkland tradeoff would do those residents little good. The concept works in Toledo because schools there are generally “neighborhood” schools.

It’s a nice honor to receive this award, although I can just hear the anti-growth zealots groaning because it’s another draw to our community and another threat for “come-heres” to ruin the Eastern Shore way of life. I’ll say this though. While I’m happy that my old hometown shares this award with Salisbury, there’s a lot more wrong there that has little chance of being fixed. At least here we have an opportunity to make our future better because people do want to move here.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.