Too often, people learn about silly ideas but feel powerless to do anything to stop them. It’s one of the reasons fewer and fewer people vote, volunteer, donate, or join civic groups.
In recent weeks, two great ideas — honoring heroic Chaplain Emil Kapaun and providing modern restrooms in Marion’s Central Park — have been imperiled by uncertainty over whether the institutions that will implement them are strong enough to resist silly ideas being floated about them.
Among the silly ideas are that Pilsen is too small to be home to a shrine of artifacts honoring the saintly chaplain and that plumbing exigencies require locating park restrooms in an overly prominent position that blocks views of the park’s inviting natural beauty.
In both cases, plenty people can and are doing something about it — putting their mouths where there money is.
By donating to the Chaplain Kapaun Legacy Fund, care of Tampa State Bank, 1110 E. Main St., Marion KS 66861, residents can make it a condition that their donation remain in Marion County.
Likewise, many of the most significant potential donors to the Central Park restrooms are insisting that their money be returned if the restrooms are positioned, as some have proposed, near the fountain on the north side of the park.
Both the Kapaun project and the park project merit everyone’s support. Not only are they good causes; they also will help bolster Marion County’s emerging tourism economy.
Both also could fall victim to silly implementation, but not if sufficient people get behind them and attach appropriate conditions to their donations. Money talks. Bull you-know-what walks.
Donating with conditions is a way to ensure that proper projects are implemented in proper ways. It also provides a way for citizens who sometimes feel powerless to re-assert their rightful role in determining how our community is improved.
Fail to put your mouth where your money is and we might soon have to go to Wichita to honor Father “Ka-Pahn” or find ourselves bragging about our “beautiful” downtown outhouses.
— ERIC MEYER