Parks add to value, don't cause crime

A letter to the editor by Johnny Plunkett, published in the Marietta Daily Journal on Wednesday, July 22, 2008

Re: Peggy Weymouth letter, "No 'parks for perverts,' vote no on bond," July 15 MDJ

I was appalled at the letter suggesting that voting for the parks bond issue would encourage crime and threaten children. Kids get into more dangerous situations wandering the streets with nothing to do than from having a neighborhood park. Common sense would say that children in an urban ghetto have a lower quality of life, with more access to drugs and gangs, than kids do out in the country where there is more open land. A community full of fat, lazy, hyperactive, little couch potatoes is worse than one where kids can go outside to play. If local parks are a bad thing, then can someone find a neighborhood in Cobb County that wants one replaced with another condominium or convenience store?

Parkland does not take money off the property tax rolls because house values go up in neighborhoods with parks. If you visit old parts of Atlanta you will find that in the olden days, when developers were less greedy, subdivisions with words like Park, Forest and Trail in the name actually had one.

Johnny Plunkett
Smyrna