Sandpoint's better future can be captured in one word

Sandpoint often defies categorization. "Full of characters" is the vague but often-used, epithet. But in the gulf between Vince Bertollini and Dennis Pence there lies a landscape of real people and real lives no one seems really able to define.

Perhaps unwittingly, Mayor Paul Graves may have found recently the simplest way to encapsulate who we are and focus our attention on claiming it as our very own. In his memo to the Sandpoint City Council encouraging the idea of forming a recreation district, his administration may have found a unifying theme that could keep our community moving forward.

Recreation for old and young: bike trails and ski trails. Recreation for residents and visitors: tour boats and ball fields. Recreation on the lake: fishing and kayaking. Recreation off the lake: mountain biking and mountain hiking. Recreation for men and for women: volleyball leagues and softball tourneys. Triathlons, ultimate Frisbee and soccer, soccer and more soccer.

Recreation for kids in trouble: climbing walls and night basketball. Recreation for health: yoga, tai chi, walking. Recreation for business: Schweitzer and Alpine Designs. Recreation for the pure and sweaty, dusty or dripping joy of it.

Recreation in big ways, ice skating rinks, and in small ways, after-school latchkey programs. Recreation to build intergovernmental cooperation and service capacity: schools and city. Recreation to even get the county involved. Recreation spilling out everywhere, every season, every time of the day, because if the rest of the country is sitting around watching people recreate on the tube, we are the ones doing it.

A recreation district is an independent agency empowered under state law. It can levy taxes, incur debt, elect its own officers. Its boundary is set by a public vote and for an election to be held, 20 percent of registered voters in the proposed area must make a formal request of the county commissioners.

Once established the district has broad discretion in its support of recreational facilities and programs. Its taxing authority is limited to .06 of a percent, so if it taxed at half of its authority an average homeowner would pay $25. About $200,000 would be raised annually for an area including Sandpoint and its neighbors.

Now if we go back 19 years, ours was not a recreating town. It was a stump-making town: logging and loving it. In December of that year a vote to form a recreation district was clobbered by about the same margin that Nixon pummeled McGovern.

The street wisdom was that the economy was too fragile for people to vote for new taxes. No question. But in addition, back then our sleepy little town had no soccer program, few tourists in the summer and more people leaving town in search of jobs than moving here in search of recreational landscapes.

From national biking events to tens of thousands of visitors a year, ours is quite a different town and much of that difference is rooted in recreation.

The world of government seems a suspicious cabal of would-be crooks to many. But in reality, it's mostly about people providing service - services we never think about (sewer and water), services we never want to use (fire and police), services no one else would have the guts to insist on (planning and zoning) and services no one else can provide (a parks system).

Recreation could be handled by volunteer groups. But when it has becomes a core value, a central motivating theme of the community's life and vitality, government must be a player, ensuring universal access and coordinated services.

Former Mayor Ron Chaney understood that, committing the city to a dedicated tax for recreation back in the late 1980s. It's unfortunate that in response to his memo the new mayor has heard back from only one councilperson. What's new? You can't sell vision. Sometimes you can't even give it away. But you can't stop pursuing it, either.

When the city bought 14 acres of new park land and a chunk of lake frontage, it was in support of recreation. When it added special funding to the recreation department to create a new cooperative program between the city, schools, county juvenile probation and private business, it was in support of recreation.

During Ken Burns' documentary, "Jazz," Duke Ellington is asked, "How do you think up your songs?" The Duke replies: "Think? It's not thinking, man. This is dreaming, this is dreaming."

In Sandpoint, it's time to stop thinking and start dreaming.

Copyright 2001 Cowles Publishing Company
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