I’m adding my voice to the chorus of people who are disappointed in what Fountain Park has become.
I used to walk around the lake almost daily, but the past few years it has become a hodge podge of unrelated additions, rules aren’t enforced on dogs, and it isn’t well maintained.
I quit walking when parts of the sidewalk were like a barnyard, covered with coot poop and sometimes dog poop. Even the plaques by the statues of the Presidents were a cause for embarrassment.
Many have asked for restrooms on the far side of the park and for better maintenance.
So I was shocked to read that the town had spent $700,000 on what seems to mainly be signs and lights. Never once have I heard anyone say, “What this park needs is more signs and floodlights around the sidewalk.”
Everyone I know who walks at night does so because they love the dark desert skies. We have what is possibly the ugliest outdoor lighting I’ve ever seen.
The gray color is not attractive, and the design looks like we have a series of small missiles planted around the park. There is nothing even slightly inviting about the color, the style, or the huge number of ugly lights. Is no one overseeing the total picture of what goes into the park and the aesthetic effect?
With all of the design talent in this town, why do we have such an ugly, inconvenient park? Ideally, the horrible lights would be removed, but if that can’t be done, at least part of them should be removed and lower wattage bulbs put in the remaining little missiles.
The $700,000 could have gone a long way to solve some of the park problems, but instead it was used to create more problems.
