Neighbors want our recreation centers to keep their current business hours, even if means paying more to use them. The city is considering cutting back those hours in the proposed budget—but during the Thursday night town hall budget meeting hosted by councilmen Natkinsky and Koop, neighbors expressed a strong opposition to that idea.

A show of hands revealed that most neighbors would not only be willing to pay higher property taxes to keep their recreation centers operating as is, but some would even be willing to pay hiked fees to use the facilities. “If it’s 110 degrees outside, you’re going to pay ten dollars to go swimming,” one neighbor put it.

More on the meeting here after the jump.
 

Recreation centers were certainly a front burner issue—and surprisingly, arts was a close second. I say surprisingly only because our neighborhood doesn’t have much of an art scene. But a handful of neighbors took the mic to express displeasure with the city’s idea to combine the Office of Cultural Affairs with the library department.

“Cuts have to be made, I get that — all I’m saying is leave the Office of Cultural Affairs independent so it can have a say-so about making its own cuts,” neighbor Marla Bane told me. “It doesn’t even make sense to combine arts and the libraries. It’s like putting auto parts in the women’s clothes department.”

And one neighbor spoke up on behalf of libraries—an issue neighbors tend to keep hush on.

“In this economy, our libraries are critical to a number of unemployed neighbors who use its computers and services” Sharon Goldstein pointed out. “Our libraries have become more important than ever and the city needs to realize that.”

Although she was the only one to advocate on behalf of libraries, she did get a resounding applause — which leads me to believe a lot of people agree with her, they’re just timid about speaking up.

After all the neighbors were done speaking, I asked councilmen Koop if she thought it had been a fair representation of our neighborhood as a whole. She agreed that it was.

Koop will host another meeting Thursday, Sept. 3 at Churchill Recreation Center. Natinksy does not have any more meetings scheduled.