I have just read your article in the June 29 — July 5 issue of “The Medford Sun,” and I just find the idea of a sledding hill absolutely ridiculous. I, too, have grown up in Medford and find a sledding hill to be the last thing that we need.
Even though most of it will be donated, how many times do we have enough snow in our area to sled? Sledding at the library barely lasts a day before the hill is dry. As for the go-karts as well, I just see that as a potential for disaster. Look what happened to the skate park that was supposed to give us something to do when I was younger. It was kept up with for maybe a year, and it’s almost as if the funding for it stopped.
On top of that, the fact that the working citizens can no longer use the dump on Saturday mornings. How many people are actually home from 9am-2pm Monday through Friday to use the dump, let alone do their house cleaning or even yard work? Between that and the constant threatening of losing our police force, this town is really going over the top.
Sure, I may only be 21, but I can certainly tell you what we need in our town. We need something for the youth to do, of course. A one time a year sledding area won’t be of any benefit. Seriously, a 15 degree angle? Good luck sledding on that. The whole go kart portion of it either won’t go through, or will end up getting shut down after one season. Someone will get injured, or the township will stop caring, like they did for the once decent and well-maintained skate park.
The lack of what there is to do for the youth in this area contributes to the reason for the youth and above to experiment with drugs. As sad as it is to say, a lot of parents don’t care what there kids do and throw money at them to keep them away. What do they do with that money? Marijuana, prescription pills, heroin, and even cocaine.
In my eyes, there needs to be something done, whether with the police force cracking down harder, a better D.A.R.E program, or any other potential thing to help keep this to a minimum. There is more of a drug and narcotic problem in Medford than in lower income areas.
I can personally say that I’ve known numerous people around my age using marijuana in middle school and that followed them into high school where on some it increased to even worse. Now when I look around, there are younger kids and MORE of them doing this.
This is just something roughly written as a result of becoming enraged by reading that article. Of course, I don’t blame you for the article, but some people in this area…
I’m currently working on an idea, but am unsure of how it’d turn out. I’d just need to collect some more information from the area and than contact some potential sponsors. The result would help to eliminate these issues by giving kids something to do in a safe environment, YEAR ROUND, and to combine the youth with similar interests into the same category to possibly make friendships. I’m not willing to let too much out of the bag right now as it is only a concept, but to put it simply: Medford is very clique oriented for the youth. If you don’t do this, or play this sport you could be shunned from said group. However, as I realized growing up, looking at it from both points of view, a lot of people shared a common interest through middle school and high school. Some, like myself, have taken it even beyond that.
Derek Rauch
Medford
