Henderson County Parks and Recreation Director Tim Hopkin confirmed Monday that an employee in his department sent out a mass e-mail to the soccer community last week using his work email, encouraging them to show county commissioners their support for a plan to build a soccer complex at the current Highland Lake Golf Course.
Hopkin said a procedural error made by the employee while Hopkin was attending a conference in Atlanta led to the e-mail being sent from a Parks and Recreation e-mail account rather than from the Henderson County Soccer Association, where it was supposed to come from.
Hopkin added that the error occurred after association President Clement Riddle asked the employee for a list of e-mail addresses for local soccer players who are registered under the N.C. Youth Soccer Association through the Parks and Recreation department. He said the employee then mistakenly sent the e-mail blast from the wrong account, and it was sent to about 800 soccer players....
Read it all. I'm confused--why is any county employee of the Parks & Rec staff sending out emails for the Henderson County Soccer Association? I don't care which email address it went out under, why is county employee time being given to a private organization, here the HCSA, to promote their particular cause?
Agree with the question posed at the end of this post: Why is anyone in Parks & Rec, which is supported by taxpayer dollars, advocating for anything other than the general notion that the county needs more soccer fields for youth?
ReplyDeletePublic agencies and the people who work in them are expected to be impartial and to support the decisions of their elected leaders, not to be swayed by outside special interests.
If you look at who is on the Board for the HCSA a little carefully, it will be easy to see why the "mistake" can occur. And I don't mean the person serving as "liasion."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hendersoncountysoccer.org/16.html
Woops.....RIGHT !
ReplyDeleteIt was on purpose.
Accident my eye
Why is Henderson County's Commissioner Mike Edney pushing the soccer complex so intently????? Larry Young has shown great fortitude in going against his fellow commissioners.
ReplyDeleteNow Mayor Staton is faced with deciding on the golf course??? Hope he listens to property owners opposed!!! Isn't he up for re-election this year???
ReplyDeleteWas, it was today....
ReplyDeleteAaah, the old "procedural error", that's funny!
ReplyDeleteLet's review the procedure, you write the message, you enter the 800 email addresses, you hit SEND. Where was the error?
Since those that are FOR the soccer fields have had a chance to send a message to the 800 people on the list...
... I propose that those that are AGAINST the fields also be granted access to the list and allowed to send a message.
That's fair, right?
If Mayor Bob Staton knew of this in July, and arguably he knew of it well before July (or should have), why didn't he speak up sooner?
Lastly, I love the Highland Lake Golf course, but if soccer fields are ultimately installed the users will be sorely disappointed in the condition of said fields.
Most of the course is in a serious floodplain. There's a reason the greens are raised and the grass grows a lot better on the high spots. The lower lying fairways are a different story, it's hard to get grass grow and there are often damp/muddy/bare areas. But that's no problem for a golfer, just scoot the ball over a little bit to a better area.
Will the soccer players enjoy fields that have big areas of "ground under repair" marked off which they will have to run around?
Let's hope this soccer plan gets stuck in the mud.