Low diatribe

I'm stuck on what it means when a system works exactly as designed but produces outcomes we can't accept.

The Eldridge City Council voted 3-2 this week to discontinue the operation of Eldridge Community Center and Skatepark. Dozens of citizens spoke at the meeting — some from Eldridge, many from the surrounding area. The community asked for a referendum. The council voted that down 3-2 and moved forward with the vote for closure.

This rink holds tremendous personal meaning for me. It's been our family's skating home for decades. All seven of our children learned to skate there. We taught our six grandchildren to skate there. It's where my wife and I had our skate-themed wedding. It's where I re-learned to skate as an adult. The QC Cuttaz have spent hundreds of hours there since we moved to the rink in 2022. I've only been refereeing roller derby for a little more than a season, but the Eldridge Community Center and Skatepark has been home to the Quad City Rollers for twenty years.

The community response has been massive. People are showing up. People are speaking. People are organizing.

And I keep hearing the same phrase: "The system is broken."

I don't think that's right. The system is working perfectly — doing exactly what it was designed to do. Allow a small group to make decisions for everyone else. Prioritize financial metrics over community value. Treat public resources like business assets.

The system isn't broken. It's just designed to optimize for the wrong things.

Listening to the council

I've been sitting with what the five council members said.

The first was clear: "The facility does not fit the definition of a community center, it's a business. A city should not run a business." Closure was the answer.

The second asked about alternatives and motioned to move the issue to referendum. Let the people decide.

The third spoke of fiscal responsibility, but noted the costs were within acceptable margins for what he would consider a public space.

The fourth spoke of his love and history with the rink, but the liability concerns kept him up at night. "One big lawsuit could bankrupt this city." The difficulty of getting insurance. The exposure.

The last also spoke of his connection with the rink, but kept returning to other things that needed "fixing" as higher priorities.

Three voted to close. Two voted to keep exploring.

I don't question their sincerity. I question the framework they're working within.

The false binary

Here's what I agree with: cities shouldn't be running businesses.

Here's what I can't accept: that closure is the only alternative.

The conversation keeps getting framed as binary. Either the city keeps running it the way it always has — like a business that loses money — or shuts it down. But that's not a failure of options. That's a failure of imagination.

Why are we treating a community resource like a business in the first place? Community ownership? Non-profit partnership? Cooperative management? Public-private collaboration? County, state, or federal funding? I don't know if any of those would work. But I know they weren't seriously explored.

If the Community Center and Skatepark doesn't fit the definition of a "community center", why? What's preventing it from being run as a community center? What's forcing the need to run it like a business? The same authority that defined the term would also have been responsible for how the facility is run.

When the only tool you have is a spreadsheet, every problem looks like a budget line to cut.

When fear becomes selective

The liability argument troubles me most.

I understand the fear. One lawsuit could bankrupt a small city. Insurance is expensive and hard to get. The exposure is real.

But every public space carries liability. Every park, every playground, every community pool. We manage the risk. We get insurance. We implement safety protocols. We accept that serving the public means accepting some level of exposure.

Eldridge built new baseball diamonds and pickleball courts. No mention of liability there.

So liability isn't the principle. It's the excuse. The real question: which communities and which activities are worth the risk?

Here's what really troubles me: we're making decisions based on fear of liability, when that liability itself is a manufactured concept that's been inflated beyond reason. The liability exists because we've privatized healthcare. If someone gets hurt, the medical bills can be so astronomical that a lawsuit becomes the only way to cover them.

We've created a system where the cost of an injury is so high that the fear of that cost drives us to eliminate the activity itself. Then we point to that fear as if it's natural law, rather than recognizing it as a design choice we made.

The liability argument measures one kind of risk while ignoring another. And it applies that incomplete measure selectively, to the communities with the least power to push back.

When representation means silence

Dozens of citizens spoke. One council member motioned for referendum. Two voted to let the people decide. Three voted to move forward with closure.

That's representation in the technical sense: elected officials making decisions on behalf of constituents. But it's not representation in the meaningful sense: giving people voice in decisions that shape their lives.

A system that defaults to closure also silences the community asking for options. The community had their say, but no apparent influence on the outcome.

This is what it looks like when a system prioritizes process over people, authority over voice, efficiency over engagement.

What the young ones see

The most hopeful thing I've witnessed is the outpouring of activism from younger generations.

They showed up to the council meeting. They spoke. Now they're organizing. Pushing petitions. Refusing to accept "this is how it's done" as an answer.

They understand something easy to forget: systems are human-made. Every rule, every process, every structure — someone designed it, someone implemented it, someone maintains it. Which means someone can change it.

"The way we've always done it" isn't natural law. It's not physics. It's not inevitable. It's just the way we've chosen to do it so far.

The youth aren't asking the system to work better. They're asking why we accept this system at all. They're questioning the design, not just the execution. They're imagining what the council couldn't.

That's the signal I'm listening for.

Designing for what matters

I've spent my career creating environments where talented people do their best work. That's always been about lowering barriers, questioning inherited processes, designing systems that serve people instead of the other way around.

This is the same work at a different scale.

The Eldridge City Council aren't the bad guys. The system isn't inherently malicious. But the design is wrong. It optimizes for financial metrics over community value. It measures outcomes in dollars instead of lives touched. It centers the voices of those in power instead of those most affected.

A skate rink that has served thousands of people over three decades isn't a failed business. It's a successful community resource. Measuring it by profit and loss instead of skills learned and relationships built — that's a design flaw, not a financial reality.

The work isn't to fix the system. The work is to redesign it.

What would a system designed for community voice look like? One that measures long-term community value instead of short-term fiscal metrics? One that explores alternatives instead of defaulting to closure?

I don't have complete answers. But I know we won't find them by accepting the current design as inevitable.

Where I stand

I don't live in Eldridge. My voice doesn't carry the same weight as those who do. I can speak, but I can't vote in their elections. The system prioritizes residents over users.

If I lived there, I would run for council on this issue. Not because I have all the answers, but because the right questions aren't being asked. Because alternatives aren't being explored. Because the community deserves voice in decisions that shape their lives.

But I don't live there. So I'm doing what I can: speaking out, supporting those who are organizing, refusing to accept that this outcome was inevitable. Asking the questions that should have been asked.

This is what it means to work within a flawed system while trying to change it. You use what voice you have, even when it's not as loud as you'd like. You support those with more leverage. You keep asking the questions that need asking.

And you don't shy away from saying what needs to be said.

What this is really about

This isn't just about a skate rink or a home for roller derby or a place where my entire family learned to skate.

It's about whether systems serve people, or people serve systems.

It's about whether "representation" means elected officials making decisions in a vacuum, or communities having voice in decisions that shape their lives.

It's about whether we measure value by profit and loss, or by lives touched and community built.

It's about whether we make decisions based on fear, or on possibility.

It's about whether we accept inherited design as inevitable, or recognize our responsibility to refine what we've been given.

The system isn't broken. It's working exactly as designed.

It is our imperative to craft it better.

---

Systems are human-made, human-imposed, and human-editable. There is always a solution — just not always one that looks like "the way we've always done it."