#477 Back to Bathgate

A Court You Can Fix Is Better Than a Court You've Removed

Rawlson King wants to rip out the basketball court at Bathgate Park and plant trees in its place. Before anyone signs off on that, Ward 13 residents deserve an answer to a simpler question: what's actually wrong with the court that removing it fixes?

The Framing Problem

Presented as a straight choice — basketball court or trees — this is an easy vote. Nobody's against trees. But that's not really the choice in front of residents. The real choice is between two paths for a piece of public recreation infrastructure that's already there, already paid for, and already used:

1. Upgrade it — resurface, fix drainage, improve lighting, maybe add shade trees around the perimeter instead of on top of it.
2. Remove it entirely and convert the space to something else.

Framing this as "court vs. trees" skips straight past option 1, which is the option that keeps the amenity and addresses whatever prompted the complaint in the first place — condition, noise, drainage, whatever it is. If the court has a real problem, name it, cost out a fix, and let residents weigh that against the cost of just tearing it out. That comparison hasn't been made public.

Who's Actually Being Served

Basketball courts are some of the cheapest, highest-use recreation infrastructure a city has per square foot. They don't need a season, a permit, or a fee — kids and adults show up and use them. Removing one doesn't just lose a court; it loses one of the few unstructured, drop-in recreation spaces in the park for the specific demographic that uses it, and it does so on the theory that green space is a straightforward substitute. It isn't. Trees and a basketball net serve different people at different hours for different reasons.

If usage is actually the concern — if the court is sitting empty and unloved — that's a testable claim, not a given. Has anyone counted? Surveyed the neighbours who use it? Or is "nobody uses it" doing the work that an actual usage study should be doing?

The Pattern

This fits a pattern worth naming plainly: decisions about shared infrastructure in Ward 13 that get announced as settled rather than opened up as a real consultation with real trade-offs on the table. Residents get told what's happening to their park, not asked what they'd trade to keep it functional. That's the same gap that's shown up around sidewalks, bus shelters, and traffic circles in this ward — a preference for the tidy press-release version of a decision over the messier, better version that actually involves the people who'll live with it.

The ask is simple: publish the condition assessment on the court, publish the cost estimate to upgrade versus remove, and put both numbers in front of residents before anyone plants a single tree over a slab that could just be fixed.

Bathgate Park doesn't have to choose between basketball and greenery. It has to choose between a council that upgrades what it has and one that finds it easier to remove what it doesn't want to maintain.