Bathgate Park..another typical King exercise

 

Bathgate Park Doesn't Need Fewer Amenities. It Needs an Upgrade.

Councillor King's office is consulting Carson Grove residents on a renewal plan for Bathgate Park. 

The court is deteriorated — that part isn't in dispute. 

What's in the concept plan is: remove the basketball court, plant a variety of trees, renew the central pathway. The survey deadline has already been pushed once, from July 14 to July 21, which on its own tells you the initial response wasn't a rubber stamp.

Here's where I land: the court needs replacement, not removal, and Bathgate needs a real park-wide upgrade, not a subtraction dressed up as one.

A deteriorated asset is a maintenance failure, not a case against the asset. 

The logic behind "it's broken, so let's plant trees instead" would justify closing any city facility that's been allowed to run down. Reforestation is a fine addition to a park. It is not a substitute for a recreation amenity residents already use, and it shouldn't be presented as the tradeoff for one — as though shade and a hoop are mutually exclusive uses of the same square footage.

What "properly resourced" actually looks like is a short trip away. 

Riverain Park is the standard here, and it's worth being specific about why. It isn't just that Riverain has a basketball court — it's that the court is integrated into a facility built to be used after dark and maintained year over year: separate push-button lighting controls for the basketball court, the tennis courts, and even the horseshoe pit, so each amenity runs on its own schedule instead of one shared switch nobody bothers with. 

A proper amenities building with secure doors and real signage, not a shed. Court-side water fountains. Multi-stream recycling instead of a single overflowing bin. And, not incidentally, courts that are actually full of people playing pickup games on a weekday evening.

That's not an accident of geography. That's what happens when a park gets funded as infrastructure instead of managed as a liability to be reduced.

The consultation as framed offers a false choice. "Remove the court and get trees and a pathway" versus "leave the broken court as-is" are not the only two options on the table, even though that's how the concept plan presents it. 

The option that isn't being offered — full renewal, matching what Riverain got — is the one residents should be asking for. If the survey's comment box is the only place to say it, that's where it needs to go.

This is the same pattern I keep flagging in this ward: a real gap in service framed as a values choice. 

Nobody voted against trees. What residents are actually being asked to accept is a downgrade in recreation capacity, wrapped in green branding, at a park whose neighbours have already seen what a fully resourced renewal looks like a few kilometres away. The comparison isn't unfair to Bathgate — it's the baseline the city itself already set.

If you're a Carson Grove resident, the survey closes July 21. Ask for what Riverain got: a rebuilt court, proper lighting and amenities, and the reforestation and pathway work in addition to — not instead of — the recreation space that's already there.

---

the active Riverain court with players mid-game works well as the lead image — it's the clearest rebuttal to "underused amenity." 

The basketball/tennis/horseshoe pit lighting panel is a strong mid-post image for the "properly resourced" section — it makes the infrastructure argument visually without needing much caption. 

The amenities building and court-side water fountain support the same point as supporting images.

Park equipment for Bathgate might cost $1 million but as a member of the Ottawa Public Library Board, our current Councillor had a front-row seat—and direct oversight—as the new central library budget ballooned from $175 million to over $350 million. If we can't trust the incumbent to catch a 100% cost overrun on a board he sits on, how can we trust him to manage the upcoming multi-billion dollar hospital and transit decisions?"

Council approved a direct mandate to increase the debt servicing budget for tax-supported debt by $2.6 million annually from 2027 through 2030.

This structural addition will accumulate to a permanent $10.4-million annual spending increase by 2030. (That is 10 million to service interest without touching one pothole) Every dollar built into this baseline is money diverted straight to debt interest rather than expanding local transit, maintaining parks or improving Bathgate  Park, or funding new community initiatives.

Note:

If your councillor's response is merely "something needs to be done". Maybe you need to vote differently?

This time around, inform yourselves, vote differently, vote wisely. Vote for Peter Karwacki for Rideau Rockcliffe.