To the editor:

Our youth in Jones County are being grossly neglected, What makes this even more worse is that it is the Jones County Board of Supervisors that are neglecting our young people. Our most precious resource in our county is our young people. I would like to address the situation that is going on with Merchant’s Park in Ellisville.

I am speaking on behalf of Merchant Park Dizzy Dean Baseball board of directors. We are a volunteer organization that wants to teach young people about baseball and to provide recreation that they will enjoy. It has been a struggle for many years to get the county to make improvements to the park and even to properly maintain the fields to be in good condition to play baseball. We as an organization were pleased to hear that Jones County had set aside some money to make specific improvements to Merchant Park and that they had a long range program set up that would make Merchants Park an outstanding facility.

One of the first phases of the program was to tear down our building that housed a concession stand, restrooms and an upstairs meeting and scorekeeping room. In January the building was demolished. We questioned the timing of this because we were concerned that we would not have any building by the time that our season started on March 29th. We were assured that the building would be up by opening day. As of this day, they have not even begun building the replacement building.

Why they could not wait until June or July when the season is over is beyond us. We have had to play baseball this whole season with a makeshift concession stand, no scoreboards, the fields can not even be watered. This does not hurt our organization, it makes it difficult. But who it hurts is the kids that are playing baseball.

The building has not even been bid out. $200,000 was set aside to pay for the building.We found out later that the lowest bid that came in for the building was $300,000. Two or three hundred thousand for a concession stand and restroom? We find that hard to believe, as I am sure that all of the citizens of this county would find that hard to believe. Fine homes are built for less than that! What is going on with this? We can only speculate.

One might think that Jones County would like nothing more than to see Merchant’s Park close down and all the kids go to Laurel and play. Laurel could not support all of the kids at their facility. They do not have enough fields. Merchant’ Park has over 400 kids playing baseball. Laurel has over 500. Plus Merchant’s Park is the only park in the county that has fastpitch softball, which also has a large number of kids.

Merchant’s Park is not in competition with Laurel for kids, we have no interest in getting their kids and we believe that they have no interest in getting ours. Members of the baseball board have a very good relation with board members at the Laurel Sportsplex.

Jones County has a responsibility to the kids of this county to correct the situation at Merchant’s Park in Ellisville. We are told over and over that the money is not there to make improvements. Perhaps their priorities are in the wrong place or they should consider raising taxes that could support this park the way that it needs to be. Imagine if we were to host tournaments at our park, what an impression that would make on visitors from other areas.

I stress, we do all of this for the kids. How about Jones County supporting this park?

— Robert Myers

Merchants Park Board of Directors