Don't ride, don't swim, what do you do?

I think I am spotting a trend. When people with expensive hobbies want an expensive playground, they lobby the local government for it. They spit tales of “oh, look, if you build this swimming pool or horse park, demand will be so strong that it will pay for itself.” The only problem with this argument is that if it were true, you wouldn’t need the government to build your toy- it would be built by private investors. I love this:

The demand is there, he said, and a facility also could serve scuba-diving classes, water polo, synchronized swimming and triathlon trainers. [WOW! That is like .01% of the County's population!]

“As soon as you build one of these pools you better put one on the books every three years, because everyone will want to go there,” Jacobson said. [Yeah, I am dumb enough to believe this modest claim from an unbiased source.]

Goodridge and other pool advocates said Howard’s plans for a 25-yard indoor pool at the North Laurel recreation center not only was an inconvenient location for the rest of the county but wasn’t large enough. [Translation: Waaa, that other pool's not big enough!]

Howard recently created an authority, which has been asked to study the best place for a pool and the costs to the county, Ulman said. Some counties rely on a revenue authority to run the swimming pools. [Now playing in a theater near you: Horse Park Task Force II: let's go swimming]

It drives me nuts that government officials feel so comfortable redistributing wealth from the general public to a certain, and often more affluent, few.