From the Editor: Thank You, Park Board

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Thank You, Park Board

The Gazette extends its warm congratulations and admiration to the volunteers on the Claudius Crozet Park board, and especially the committee that spearheaded fundraising for the new dome for the pool, for achieving a milestone that makes the park an even greater benefit to the town. Our thanks go, too, to all the citizens of western Albemarle who have stepped forward to contribute to winterizing the pool and giving us a park that will offer year-round public, family fitness programming. Raising $440,000 was a tall order for Crozet and it is a testament to our can-do community spirit that we pulled it off in a moribund economy.

The Albemarle supervisors still have to release $200,000 they have set aside for years for Crozet park improvements and they should do so without imposing conditions on it. As a public community park, managed by local volunteers, Crozet Park saves the county untold thousands in parks and recreation expense that western Albemarle residents would otherwise turn to the county to provide. The county’s contribution to the dome project leverages a much bigger outcome than the county could otherwise achieve and the county’s money is, after all, the people’s money in the first place. Some 40 year-round jobs are produced by the addition of the dome and the supervisors should do their part to make them real as promptly and simply as possible.

Build Crozet Library

In the eyes of area residents, the Albemarle Supervisors crossed the Rubicon on funding the construction of Crozet Library when they sent it out for bids. While other financial strains no doubt face the public treasury, citizens’ expectations for the long overdue project are now raised to a pitch that must be delivered on. The supervisors have not shown seriousness about financing the project in the face of earlier appeals to advance the library, preferring to punt the project into the distant future. Now they must. With this vote, they have declared their solidarity with people about the library and they must now do their duty. It will never be cheaper than now.