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Letter: All children benefit from recreation opportunities

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) A closed playground in Riverton on Thursday, April 2, 2020.

The issue of leisure inequality is so often ignored. Not only in the state of Utah, but also in our entire nation.

Our legislative bodies and government representatives spend so much time bickering and arguing that they leave so many opportunities on the table. Children in this country, children in this state, county and even city, are missing out on opportunities that could help shape their future.

Failing to give children better access to safe parks that have equipment and programs that they want to participate in is a huge missed opportunity. We have the ability, and funding, to give local children in all neighborhoods programs and opportunities that not only provide them with something fun to do but also allow for more development early on in their lives. This development can shape who they are in the future, and simply takes a minor amount of attention from the community and from our representatives.

Programs like this could not only benefit children, but can also take stress off of parents who are struggling to help their child understand the world and help their child find what they want to do or what fun activity they’d like to participate in.

This is an opportunity for us as a community to demand our voices be heard for not only ourselves, but for generations to come. The impact that programs like these could have on children, can last well into the next hundred years. If you give a young child a skill that they can use, they are able to use that for the rest of their life, not just for the next six months.

We need to hold our representatives accountable and stop the useless bickering. We need to come together on what could be the first of many common ground issues, and ensure that all children have a safe and fun place to play, and exercise their bodies and minds.

Carson Williams, Salt Lake City

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