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WE GOT THEIR GOAT
The goats are gone. It’s like they never were. What happened? Nobody at the city is talking. One day the goats were there, wandering in a rather sickly fashion, about an enclosed section of Hillmoor that appeared to be about a quarter of an acre in size. The fencing was cheap, the debris scattered area of overgrown vegetative matter of some kind was a mess the goats were brought in to deal with. The goats didn’t like the food, so mostly, they laid down and waited. A night came last week and then morning followed. That morning the goats were gone, and the city had the department of public works mow the entire area where the goats had been placed…almost like the cleared land was somehow supposed to represent the success of the undergrowth clearing problem.
Hillmoor has a problem. It’s getting no care. The goat thing, by the way, could marginally work, although it would take more than four thousand goats, eating constantly, to clear the entire area that Hillmoor composes. The goats would also have to stay to keep the land clear. If Hillmoor is allowed to continue to lay fallow, returning to its natural state, then the people who live around it are going to discover, once again, that nature is not that kind of humans if left to its own devices. A rage across the country is for large corporations with huge footprint campuses to stop planting grass, putting in bridges across small streams and all of that. Those companies that have so far gone in that direction are discovering all over again just how unfriendly nature can be. The growth gets so high, over time, of all manner of matter, what most refer to as weeds, that it becomes densely inhabited by insects and small animals. Most insects and many small animals are not good neighbors for human beings.
What happened to the money collected by the city for the naming of the goats and the sponsoring of the goats. Apparently, nobody seems to know the answer to those questions either. Rebuilding the golf course is a recurring discussion point at almost every meeting of the Hillmoor ad hoc committee, put together in order to have citizens give the city input about what might be done with the property. It would take about nine million dollars to rebuild and expand another Hillmoor golf course (the irrigation and plumbing infrastructure has all fallen apart over time). Having a nine-hole course could accomplish the job of bringing human-friendly park space to the public but nine-hole golf courses don’t attract the real kind of golfing revenue that the expense for the upkeep of the course would require. It’s pretty safe to write that the city is not likely to cough up nine million dollars for Hillmoor.
Another hot idea is to put the coming new YMCA on the property, with lots of parking acreage and a sizable building. Once one might factor in the traffic problem (during summer weekends Highway 50 extends from Cook Street all the way to the intersection to Edwards Boulevard, and many times that problem includes massive lines of cars stretching the entire distance. How would man people being added to the entrance and exit parts of the land that would have to be built change what’s currently a snarled nightmare of cars? When the parking study was done for the projected building of a Dunkin Donuts a couple of year ago, to be built near where the bowling alley currently sits, the study concluded that waiting to enter the traffic on Highway 50 in that area might take up to twenty minutes. That was a shock to everyone who read the report. Traffic is heavier now.
The goats are gone, and the Geneva Shore Report is partially at fault simply because the editorial staff of the paper always believed the idea to be expensive, useless, and downright idiotic. It was bad idea, and the idea was implemented badly, as well. The good news is that the city gave up on the project before things could get worse.
