It’s a pretty straight forward affair, filing to run for office. Write your name, address, and phone number on a sheet of paper, sign it, hand over a check in the amount of 1% of the salary of the office you’re seeking (in the case of alderman, $333), raise your hand and swear you’re not a “stalking horse” and you meet the qualifications for the office and — POOF! — you’re in the fight of your life.
That’s a really boring video. Where’s the drama?
Posted by Douglas Duckworth | 06. Jan, 2009, 10:27 PMMr. French–I just read your blog about last August’s visit by you and Chris Carter, a former student and runner of mine, and realize that we needed to sent this to you as quickly as possible. We are getting a pretty negative response from Gary Bess. He feels we should have been at a meeting 18 months ago–a meeting we knew nothing about–and that we could easily move our concerns to Forest Park, which we don’t want to do. There are 6 of us on the committee, and we would like to meet with you if we could.–Blase Boettcher 606-1978)
The following is a letter we drafted to you earlier this week.:
Mr. Antonio French
Ward 23, Alderman Elect
4524 Athlone Ave,
St. Louis, MO 63115
antonio@21stward.org
Dear Mr. French:
As a group of concerned residents, coaches, athletic directors, artisans and business people, we want to alert you as our Alderman Elect to a challenge that effects the future of the long standing presence of the sport of cross country in O’Fallon Park in North St. Louis.
The current plans for the new O’Fallon Park recreation center indicate that the center would interfere with about 1-1/2 miles of the current and historic cross country course. Groundbreaking for the new center is scheduled for late July 2009. As it is, construction will prevent us from using the existing course this fall, and plans indicate that the combined “footprint” of the finished building with its parking lot would eliminate the present course completely.
O’Fallon Park has provided a challenging venue for high school and college cross country events for over fifty years. The course’s attributes include its proximity to many high schools, challenging hills and grades, and the fact that runners do not have to cross roads and worry about oncoming vehicles.
The O’Fallon Park cross country course currently is the home course for the many St. Louis Public Schools (Beaumont, Sumner, Vashon, Roosevelt,Gateway Tech, Cleveland NJROTC, Clyde C. Miller, Northwest, Soldan, Central VPA, Metro, Ethel Hedgeman Lyle Academy, and Confluence Academy), as well as for
Cardinal Ritter College Prep. In addition, students from Normandy, McClure South-Berkeley, Jennings, Lutheran North, and Trinity use the course to compete and train. Over the years, the O’Fallon Course has hosted large and small invitational meets, the PHL and Archdiocesan Athletic Association conference meets, and even state-sanctioned district meets.
If we have to abandon the course at O’Fallon, it is unclear where the city public schools will be able to continue their cross country programs. In addition, football and running programs from Matthews-Dickey Boys and Girls Club, Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club, and the Blues AAU Track Club all currently use the park and its cross country course for hill training and other fitness exercises.
Our group has been meeting since the Fall, and we have talked to the present alderwoman, a representative of the city Parks Department, other politicians, the architects who designed the new recreation center, and representatives of the St. Louis city Board of Public Service. Most recently, we have met with Mr. Donald Williams, Capital Improvement Project Liaison. He encouraged us to deal primarily with the
alderwoman. However, since she lost in the primary on Tuesday, we feel it would be more advantageous to contact you directly.
Please understand that we are not opposed to the new recreation center. In fact, we embrace it as an exciting improvement to an already wonderful park. What we would like to do to work out a solution with the designer and builders of the rec center that would enable us to keep our cross country course at O’Fallon, while maintaining its most striking features as a challenging cross country venue–perhaps
utilizing other parts of the park. These changes might require some construction assistance, possibly the leveling a few key areas—which could be accomplished conveniently at the same time as building
construction. Other solutions have been suggested that involve closing portions of certain roads in the park so that our young people do not have to cross against active traffic.
As the plans for the new recreation center at O’Fallon Park near the groundbreaking stage, we would like to see the re-establishment and maintenance of a non-asphalt running course that would provide residents and nearby schools a safe, fun, and exciting place for healthy exercise and would reinforce and maintain the half-century tradition of O’Fallon Park as a cross country center for the schools and citizens
of St. Louis.
Attached to this correspondence is a reproduction of the official and current site plan. You will see that the placement of the new recreation center would severely curtail the placement and functionality of the current cross country course. We are not advocating changing the site; instead, we believe this is a good opportunity to make some minor adjustments to the placement of fences and the parking lot, as well as course modifications course that would increase safety of the runners and provide a fantastic venue for the hundreds of high school students who use the course each year.
The tradition of running at O’Fallon Park is a rich one. The roster of outstanding runners who have used the park include such athletes as Dick Gregory and his brother Ron, Janella Torrence, Stephanie Shockley, Louis Virdure, Joe Ward, Ron Hypolite, Darwin Price, Don Williams, Earl Parham, James Yeargin, David Forbes, Alexandria Weathersby, Sherman Bolden, Joe Cannamore, Harry Ballard, Dawn Mills, Kenny Burke, Dr. Phil Green, Anthony Leaks, Naim Henderson-Gray, USAF Lt. Col. Elvert
Gardner, Julian Winfield, Brian Baldwin, and state representative Chris Carter. Coaches include Missouri Track and Cross Country Hall-of-Famers Ben May, Harold Thompson, and Bob Beck, JamesColeman, Preston Thomas, Richard McPherson, Rodney Dotson, Tom Morgan, National Federation of Interscholastic Coaches Association Coach of the Year Jim Prahlow, Clarence Bruce, and Ken Greathouse. The list is endless. Quietly and effectively, O’Fallon Park has supported the careers of some of the finest runners and athletes St. Louis has ever produced and over many years has continued
to provide a challenging and safe place for St. Louis student athletes to practice and compete.
We believe that the city of St. Louis has a great opportunity at this time to build on this tradition and create a state-of-the-art running course which would be a complement to the new recreation center and would be used by St. Louis residents for years to come.
We realize that your tenure as alderman does not begin until April, but we hope that you will help us address this community opportunity. We look forward to meeting with you at your earliest convenience. With this objective in mind, we will be calling you in the next several days to determine a convenient time for us to meet and share ideas with you.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Sincerely,
The Save Our Course steering committee
Ron Wilkinson, co-chair, 382-6613, ronscratch11@aol.com
Blasé Boettcher, 606-1978, blaseboettcher@gmail.com
Posted by Blase W. Boettcher | 11. Mar, 2009, 12:45 PM