If Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger has his way, East Hamilton will be the last high school built locally where football fans are still using portable toilets nearly a decade after the school opened.
While complimenting Commissioner Sabrena Smedley at Wednesday’s County Commission meeting on her plan to use her district’s discretionary general fund money to tap into the county’s line of credit to issue a capital bond for new restrooms for East Hamilton, the mayor said he intends to ask the commission to fund athletic fields and associated needs when school construction is considered in the future.
That has not been the case in recent years, but it’s the right thing to do. It’s better for the county to take the financial hit at the outset rather than punish the individual communities by having them build the facilities piecemeal, figure out how to pay for them and risk the price for construction rising when they finally can afford it.
At a minimum, the commission should fund the design and determine the cost of such facilities. That way, if commissioners don’t go along with fully funding the extra-curriculars, the schools will know how much they’ll need to raise or attempt to get donated.
Commissioners may say, and probably will, that the community should have some type of buy-in on their new facilities. But they should never again allow excitement to be created over the opening of a new high school, only to see that excitement die when students, parents and the community learn how much was not supplied for them.