OPINION

JOHN BRUMMETT: Preachin' a vision

Let's not call it a preacher thing, for that would risk stereotype.

But state Sen. Jason Rapert, a preacher, does it, and, on the phone Thursday, Mayor Frank Scott, a preacher, did it too.

It's responding to your question by insisting that you listen while they take you all the way back to the beginning--to Genesis 1:1, or at least Matthew 1:1. They just know that, by their sincere establishment of the full and appropriate context, you inevitably will find their position compelling and irresistible, if you'll only follow along rapt for the duration.

The first time I ever remember asking Rapert anything, we were on the state Capitol steps and I kept waiting for someone to play "Just As I Am" so that I could walk the aisle. I didn't want to walk the aisle to repent, but only to escape the earnest, inflection-rich and self-impressed verbosity.

All I asked Scott on Thursday was to show me the savings in shutting down the War Memorial golf course in two weeks, losing the stream of golfer revenue that didn't meet the expenses, while you (1) still have to keep the green space maintained and (2) are promising the city your latest slogan--an "R-3" initiative to "revitalize, reimagine and reinvest" that will cost money as it adapts a hilly golf course to ball fields or amphitheaters or a zoo expansion or hiking trails or whatever.

Well, Scott said, we need to understand that he inherited a budget laden with a $7 million hole and that the previous administration had plugged it with one-time money and that we're having to find additional cuts and that the city board agreed that the city cannot maintain four golf courses (War Memorial and Hindman, set to close, and Rebsamen and the First Tee program for youth, set to remain) and blah and blah and blah.

I knew that. I did not phone the mayor to blame him for anything, except maybe being slogan-happy or jargon-happy or taking me back to the start when I asked a question assuming our mutual understanding of the context of what I was asking.

Eventually, as is his custom, Scott said three things precisely and even powerfully on point, which I will synopsize.

One is that the city will now be spared the specific expenses of pro-shop personnel and cart maintenance and special golf-green maintenance, and can keep the acreage generally maintained through existing park services. There might be a few inexpensive things that the city could do for new activities right away, such as disc golf or movies or designated hiking paths.

But two, he said, the broader vision will take time and require public input and new money that could include donations or foundations or public-private partnerships. He never said this was an immediate or even quick turnaround.

And three, this issue is much more than a budget cut. It is, he said, an example of the change he promised, which he didn't call generational, but I do.

It's to transform beautiful green space in the very middle of midtown--in an expanse that connects Hillcrest to Interstate 630 and on south--into our own Central Park with a variety of regionally desirable activities that could generate their own revenue and invite an intensity of community-enriching activity for our youth as well as "our seasoned brethren."

I take "seasoned brethren" to be preacher-speak for old-folk Little Rockians who don't want to lose a familiar hometown that includes a Fair Park Boulevard with golfers walking across it from the 16th green to the 17th tee.

That's how I remember the course, though it's been decades since I played it, or tried to, and I am, after all, among the "seasoned brethren" whose memory might not be what it once was.

Anyway, it all comes down to Scott being absolutely right.

Three city-subsidized golf courses plus First Tee were at least two investments too many. And the War Memorial golf property is uniquely and ideally situated to engage the citizenry in the middle of its divide, far more extensively and inclusively than a golf course, no matter how charming, no matter how much a part of us, ever could.

I visit occasionally, though not nearly enough, the Jim Dailey Fitness Center in War Memorial Park, a few yards from the golf course. I find it the city's single most progressive institution, fully racially and ethnically integrated, used affordably by residents of all economic stations to seek or maintain health and fitness.

You can walk around that indoor track and peer at the gymnasium floor below to see pickle ball at one end and, at the other, the darnedest battle of high-end badminton you've ever seen.

I believe the mayor is "reimagining" that golf course as an expansive outdoor version of that kind of diversity of happy people engaged in a wide array of joyful, enriching activities.

So keep on preachin' it, Brother Scott.

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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial on 06/23/2019

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