I saw a shadow on Tahquitz this week. It appeared suddenly when I heard a rumor about the ICRC prohibiting the children at Town Hall from using the new community playground.

I, as a stakeholder (literally since I paid for a commemorative fence stake) in the playground, am stunned. I worked several hours along with about 700 other volunteers to build the facility, not for the glory of the committee that organized the effort but for the benefit of the people of our town.

What I don’t understand is how a group, whose membership reportedly amounts to less than one-tenth (0.1) percent of the Hill’s full-time population, would restrict usage by youngsters, especially after about 20 percent of residents gathered in a good-intentioned effort to benefit all of Idyllwild and its neighbors.

I respect the right of a private organization to make rules over its own nonpublic assets, but wouldn’t it be fitting for the ICRC to welcome all children and their parents and caregivers to this community playground?

Barry Zander
Idyllwild

2 COMMENTS

  1. Has anyone actually bothered to contact the ICRC to see what's going on? Maybe ask them IF this happened and if so why? I haven't seen anyone mention that they have tried to see if there is any validity to the story. Maybe they had good reason if it happened.

  2. Since it has now been alleged, not only in a couple of letters to the Town Crier, but openly spoken around town, that the ICRC is prohibiting certain children from enjoying the newly constructed COMMUNITY PARK. I am finding myself, wondering why no one representing the ICRC, has yet to step up to the plate and publicly address the allegation which had begun flying against them just less than a week after completion of the project. I am also wondering about the actual cost of constructing the park since the majority, if not all of the tools, some of the building materials and all of the labor had been donated by the COMMUNITY of Idyllwild. I and many others don’t see $100,000 of the COMMUNITY’s donations spent on a park not meant for ALL the KIDS who are just as much part of the COMMUNITY of Idyllwild as the adults are. So what about the allegation, ICRC? Has the COMMUNITY of Idyllwild been duped into donating for and building what is becoming more and more, a NON-COMMUNITY PARK which discriminates against certain children?