Dear Editor,
You can do a quick search right now…Picklball/Florida/Lawsuits. Certainly, Citizens of Plant City want Pickleball. It is a sport that has been played in all 50 states since 1990! No, the residents surrounding this already existing park do NOT want it right across the street from their bedrooms! We have been telling the city this for months. I have spoken with countless City employees at this point and have stood up at the podium for the Commissioners meetings. It is inappropriate to put this fanatic sport within a community. Let alone be the first in the city put on a street with no sidewalk (not my department), streets not wide enough for two cars to pass (not my department), next to the main waterway of this side of the City, West Side Canal aka Mill Creek (that flooded and thankfully is in the budget to be cleaned!) A small plastic, very bouncy ball on one side and a big bouncing ball on the other side of a creek! Seriously. This is a nature park and if maintained, the Azaleas could flourish again! The sound barrier wall for the Pickle ball isn’t even in the budget.
Underutilized!! The public restrooms have been locked up for YEARS. The existing Basketball courts are maintained with a weed wacker ON the courts. They are actually a safety hazard. There are no more after school programs since the Planteen has been closed across the street. They had needed a new roof for YEARS!
One of my requests from the City Commissioners was to go visit the park. Don’t just go drive by, but actually hang out. Absolutely every person I have spoken to about this in this city knows what park I’m talking about. Not by name, not by the proximity of it being the literal Central Park of the City, but by its use. The best way I have heard it is that “it is the park that the less fortunate hang out.” Well, when anyone that is hungry can go to the Winter Visitor Building, owned by the City, and have a free meal every day, The City allows for a free shower truck to park on that same land. Although the truck can’t pull in without damaging the top of their truck, because the city hasn’t maintained the trees. At this Historic Community Center Complex, The Planteen has a full playground behind bars on that land. They also still have shuffle boards! Just the paved earth, no benches or canopy. Why not put this sports park at The Planteen complex? Because the plans for that space is in the works for an Event Center. Almost $15 million was just past for the Library Community Center. If our health was top priority, why were COVID relief funds used to build a Professional Tennis Facility? “So, that facility is for professionals, and the courts across the street from your home are for everyone else” said by a city employee!
I utilize Rowena Mays park to teach about berms and swales. Who else in town teaches flood prevention? How about Rain Gardens? They have already been engineered, just not maintained, just like the waterway. Novel idea for this municipality, let’s maintain what we have with minimal earth destruction, for the safety of the current residents.
I wonder what the quiet community around the Young/Cherry Street block thinks about the plans for a Splash Pad/Skate Park in their front yards! Increasing traffic flow exponentially onto small quiet streets is irresponsible. Like the new City Office building in the middle of a community with no sidewalk “because there are no other sidewalks in the neighborhood.” How about a sidewalk along the Multi Million dollar Sady Gibbs Martin Community Center? There are sidewalks in front of both convenience stores just a block away. One older and one newer than the Community Center construction.
According to PC annual financial report they are projecting the population of PC to almost double in the next 15 years. Pushing traffic onto our charming streets for the fun of it, without preemptive safety measures, reckless at best.
I recommend to everyone I talk with to go to their local meetings, go witness, find out what is going on in your back yard. Because, The World is changing and there is something we can do about it.
Danielle Kimbrell
Plant City resident