[Eagle03/06]

This question of public money being used to fund Cal Ripken is kind of funny, considering that the CR fields are at least on Johnson County School property and funds are all JoCo school money. Even if it is taxpayer money, it goes to school improvements, and getting all these kids out is a benefit to the school community. PLL fields are city property, and for the record so is the high school baseball field. So city employees are the ones who take care of PHS and PLL fields. And the baseball field used to be a public recreation area until it was turned into a baseball field for PHS. So alll activities, such as the softball league Paintsville used to have for adults, couldn't be played on it anymore.
Now, I bet that Cal Ripken sign ups weren't done at any city school. Don't they always do sign ups at the Rec Center? Anyone is free to get on the radio and advertise as many sign ups in a public place as they want. PLL shouldn't ask CR to do their sign ups for them. If a PLL member had asked, they might have been allowed to come do sign ups at the same time as CR was doing sign ups. It wasn't the obligation of anyone from CR to proactively ask PLL.
I'm not taking one side or the other, but I hardly see how this hurts anyone. PLL numbers were going down anyway. This is just a way to give more kids the opportunity to play without having to be a superstar. Cal Ripken has room for more kids in wider age ranges to play. How does that hurt anybody? If there are kids and parents who feel loyalty to PLL, they can stay there.
Everyone seems to agree that the goal here is what's best for youth baseball. You can see that everyone agrees that there are 500+ kids between the two leagues, as compared to a much smaller, and declining, number of kids when we only had PLL. So, by that standard, Cal Ripken is great.