As most of my readers know, I was elected a couple of weeks ago as the new Democratic Committeeman of the 21st Ward. One of the issues I raised in the campaign was the state of one of our ward’s beautiful parks, O’Fallon Park.

Located on West Florissant Ave, near Interstate 70, the park is one of the city’s largest and, having grown up just a block away from it, it is home to many of my childhood memories. In fact, my grandmother taught me to fish in O’Fallon Lake when I was a boy. And so it especially pains me to see the current state of the park. Mostly unused by children and families, with the exception of some regular fishermen and men drinking beers in the afternoon, the people in the neighborhood have largely surrendered the park.

Until recently, the most activity O’Fallon regularly saw was the cruising activities of young people on Sunday afternoons. Hundreds of cars would slowly make their way down West Florissant, through the streets of O’Fallon and back again. Occasionally fights would break out, or even gun shots. Responding to the violence and neighborhood complaints, the police shut down the Sunday cruising. Now police are posted at the entrance of the park on Sundays, demanding to see valid drivers licenses and proof of insurance before drivers can enter the park. This moved the cruising over to our other park, Fairground Park, making Natural Bridge Rd. the site of the cruising and occasional violence. But after a 4-year-old girl caught a stray bullet in her leg while sitting in the backseat of a car on Natural Bridge, the cruising teens were pushed elsewhere again.

But back to O’Fallon.

So last week, newly-elected State Representative Chris Carter (in whose district the park is located) and I paid a visit to the maintenance facility in O’Fallon Park. The facility, housed in the old Groundskeeper’s Home, is the base of operations for a small crew of full-time and summer workers charged with maintaining ten parks in north St. Louis.

When Carter and I arrived, we asked to speak to the person in charge. “He’s around back,” we were told. So around back we walked.

We came upon two older men, beers in hand, engaged in a game of horse shoes.

As we approached, we announced ourselves and asked to speak to the supervisor. One of the men, dressed in a white wife-beater shirt, took a swig of his Bud Light and looked Carter and I up and down. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m Chris Carter and I’m the new state representative for this area and this is Antonio French, the new committeeman,” said Carter. “We were just coming to talk to you about the park and to see if there’s anything we can do to help you all.”

The man stepped forward. His buddy, with one eye kind of cocked to the side, stayed quiet and looked to his friend. “That’s fine, but me and my friend are in the middle of a game. It’s 17 all. So why don’t you two just give us a minute while we finish this up,” the man said as he picked up his horse shoes and turned back toward his goal.

“We’re only going to 21,” he looked back and said.

I looked at my watch. 3:30. “Unbelievable,” I said to Chris.

This is city government.

We talked to a group of Parks Department employees while we were there. We learned a few things — some that will be helpful to solving the problem of the park, and others that just demonstrated how difficult it’s going to be to solve the problems of city government and civic apathy.

They showed us a fountain that has been broken and flooding a section of the park for eight months. It has been reported, they said, but nothing has been done.

We walked on our own and saw trash and broken glass throughout the sand of the children’s swing and slide area.

The famed boat house, which is the symbol of the park, sits abandoned, unused for years. Chained up and boarded up, we were shown a door covered in plywood. How long had it been boarded up, I asked. Since the Harmon Administration.

There are different philosophies at play in St. Louis on how strong cities are built and rebuilt. Some think stadiums, casinos, and upscale residential are the key. They think investing our public dollars in major entertainment projects is the smart thing to do. They gamble our money on new residents moving to the city and reshaping the face of our town.

They are wrong. And history has proven them wrong over and over again.

I think strong cities remain strong and cities long in decline, like our own, become stronger by investing in our neighborhoods. Because no one is coming to save us. It is just going to be us for a long time. And unless we invest in our neighborhoods, where we live and where we are dying, then more of us will continue to leave.

Parks are anchors. Especially 126-acre parks like O’Fallon. When we surrender them, we are surrendering entire neighborhoods of families.

Schools are anchors. Public, private, charter, or Catholic, it doesn’t matter. Schools are anchors and when they close, we are surrendering those corners where there was once activity, and voices, and young people to the silence, and blight, and vandalism, and crime that will fill the vacuum.

If I spend the next month fighting to get that water fountain fixed in O’Fallon Park, I’ll do so knowing that it is not just the flooding of a section of one park that I’m trying to stop, but also the flood of apathy that leads to the white flags going up when good people have given up on trying to build a better neighborhood.