Thursday, Mar 26, 2009
Teton Valley News
When I was a kid my mom made me play with my cousin Lisa. We didn’t have much in common: I liked Barbies, she liked books, she liked silly games, I wanted to play outside. With other friends and cousins around, the forced friendship didn’t make us closer. In the end it probably reinforced our differences.
I was very disappointed last week when the Fair Board couldn’t find space for Teton Basin Ice and Recreation (TBIR) on the fairgrounds property. The 36-acre property seems underused most of the year. It looked like an easy solution and a perfect fit. It’s disappointing not just for the kids and residents from the north end of the valley that now have a longer drive to Victor, where the ice rink will be located, but more importantly, I’m disappointed at the opportunity lost for our community to bridge a divide.
What struck me was not the differences between TBIR and the Fair Board, but what the two groups have in common: both are working very hard to provide activities for residents - mainly kids, both have invested a lot of their own time and labor, both are raising money to build better facilities, both want to do something good and lasting for our community.
The next few years are going to be more than tough. We are officially in the bust of our boom days and money is in short supply. For us to meet even our basic needs we are going to have to take stock of our inventory, combine resources, and prioritize projects. This will be impossible without collaboration. Enjoying a beer and playing broomball doesn’t make you a bad person, nor does mutton busting make you small minded. If we only focus on our differences and create fear based on them, we won’t succeed as a community and our kids will be the worse for it.
History has shown that great civilizations found their greatness not during times of success but in times of adversity. Our local history has shown this to be true and we have that opportunity again in Teton Valley. I was happy to see that the Fair Board has a visual idea for the 36 acres of fair/public recreation property. But, in tough times, we can’t sit idle on limited public land with growing community needs and defend it with an idea that doesn’t have a plan to achieve it. Now more than ever, we need to plan for our future, and we need to work together – across jurisdictions and across the public/private sector – if we want any chance of being successful.
Sure, the Board of County Commissioners could have forced a friendship between the Fair Board and TBIR, but in the end I believe it would have reinforced our differences –which already has too much light shed on them - and done more damage than benefit for the community. For friendships to happen, we have to want them.
We all need to make more of an effort to reach across the divide and embrace our diversity. Regardless of your likes and dislikes, we should all make an effort to go to the fair this summer and a TBIR event - not because we have an affinity toward cows or ice, but because they are community events, this is our community and we need to support it.
