To the editor:
I think people in Amesbury should voice their opinions to help elected officials make the decisions best for all of us.
I have lived in Amesbury all my life so I am fairly familiar with the way things were and the way they are today.
We are now talking about revitalizing the area at Town Park where was once a blooming area for the children in town to skate and enjoy themselves, but if my memory serves me correctly it ended up being a place for boys to play hockey and left little or no time for other kids or general skating. As a result of the boards built around it and the benches for the hockey players, it then became known as the hockey rink. Consequently lots of graffiti was written on the walls all around it and holes eventually poked through the walls leaving the rink abandoned and it was eventually torn down.
Several years later a disc golf course was put in there with the approval of all town officials present and past and has always been maintained and upgraded at no expense ever to the town. From my understanding the high school uses it during phys ed for the kids, which gives them exercise by walking through the entire course along with playing a game and having competition. Any of the kids that want it are given free instructions.
Now some individuals decide that they want to have an ice skating rink for the "general public" and the only place they can put it is where there is already something else that has many hundreds of people a month using it and also brings income to the businesses in Amesbury, all at no cost to the town, the businesses or the taxpayers.
I think it is great to maintain our past but I also feel the need for my children and grandchildren to be able to work and plan for the future and not live in the past, as some people seem to want to do. Why can't we work together and have the construction people move the trailers across the street, have the DPW remove the trees and put it there. The land is almost level and whatever isn't level the water will level it when it is poured over it to make ice.
Let's not take away the future to go back to the past. There is more than one place in town to put a skating rink that could hardly have been used the last couple years anyhow because the winters were too warm.
As a taxpayer for at least the last 50 years in this town it makes absolutely no sense to me that there is even this much discussion about whether it should be put there or not. Tell them no, leave the disc golf course be and put it in somewhere else. We should all take a stand and support our beliefs.
Gerry Ouellet
Amesbury
(Editor's note: Gerry Ouellet is the father of Dan Ouellet, founder of the Amesbury Pines Disc Golf Course.)
