Inside the indoor athletic facility arms race that’s sweeping the Ozarks:
A day after Republic voted to pass a bond issue allowing it to build a multi-million dollar indoor athletics facility, the phones rang at the high school all day.
The calls weren’t from any angry residents who might have attempted to vote the issue down. Instead, they were from athletic directors and administrators all over the state. They wanted to know how the southwest Missouri school district got such a project off the ground, and if they could schedule times to visit.
Many of those same administrators called Nixa High School to see if they could tour its $18 million indoor facility, which is set to open this summer. Other possible tour sites include the facility at Logan-Rogersville High School, 20 miles down the road, or the one that opened at Ozark High a year ago.
A day after I voted against the bond issue, you mean.
Because building it is one thing, but after building it must be maintained. Every year something (and every year more) has to come from the budget which won’t pay teachers or support book, sorry, free laptops for students learning.
Meanwhile, private groups are building for-profit indoor and outdoor sports facilities; non-school are looking to build indoor facilities; and non-school governments are spending millions to acquire indoor sports facilities.
Basically, it’s the convention center arms race again, where “competing” cities overbuild capacity, find them to be financial sinkholes, and then have to upgrade them to remain competitive in chasing a limited market. All so that government officials can burnish their resumes for their next gigs and fail upward.
