Taxpayer-funded dreams

My little home town, Cedar City, Utah, has a multi-million dollar "aquatics center" it can't afford. The center was ostensibly built to provide a pool for our local high schools whose old pool was razed a couple of years ago. Oddly, none of the four pools in the new center meet the needs of high school competitive swimming!

The aquatics center grew from a dream for a city recreation complex including a gym, a game room, bowling, and billiards. The dream was scaled back to an overgrown hot tub when people realized how expensive dreams can be. Now, there are rumors that the dreamers are back. They reportedly want to start by adding a gym.

If anyone wants to add a gym or otherwise enlarge that already bloated aquatics center project, I [facetiously] demand the center also include an indoor 20-lane 100-yard rifle range, an indoor 20-lane 25-yard pistol range, an indoor skeet range (for when Obamao visits our little town), and an indoor trap range.

The complex must include staff instructors and a range officer on each range (I'm retiring from Atlas Air in December and will need a job), a pro shop with gun rentals, gun/ammo sales, and a reloading room. If we build places for golfers to play, why not for shooters?

Since it's my idea, I expect a lane to be perpetually reserved for my exclusive use on each range. Hunter education classes and shooting clubs, of course, should get scheduling priority on the rest of the lanes.

In other words, dreaming is good. I only ask that people fulfill their extravagant dreams with their own labors and money -- not mine!

Something like this would be a good start for Cedar City's new indoor shooting complex: