No to ‘doggie park' at Sparta taxpayers' expense

To the Editor: An article in the Sparta Independent of Oct. 6 about Wendy Tillman seeking a “doggie park” at taxpayers’ expense prompts me to make the following comments. Unless a park or any other facility that is to be paid for with taxpayer money will benefit and be used by a fair majority of the taxpayers, it should not be approved. In Sparta, taxpayers in recent years have been required to pay for many extravagances that benefit only a small percentage of those paying the bill. One such facility is the skating or skate-board addition in Station Park, which is probably used by less than 10 percent of Sparta’s population. Since this facility opened I have visited it a dozen times or more, always to find one or more skaters not wearing helmets or protective gear of any kind. How long is it going to take before someone gets badly hurt because of this lack of supervision? I do not know, but you can rest assured that when it does happen, someone is going to sue the township and the township (taxpayers) will have to pay because of a safety restriction clause in their liability policy that absolves the insurance company of all responsibility. Leonard R. Peck Sparta