MV Meeting Places Need Community Support
We are fortunate in the Moapa Valley to have a variety of facilities that provide places for the community to gather, meet and play. That is good because this tight-knit community tends to gather to meet and play quite often. Our parks, pools and fairgrounds have, for some time, provided places for outdoor community activities. But venues for indoor gatherings have been more scarce…until recently. Through the efforts of a few persistent local residents, the Moapa Valley has, over the past few years, seen a renaissance of restoration in old historic buildings. The renovations of the Old Logandale School and the Old Overton Gym have provided the community with indoor venues for activities and public meetings. Both of these facilities provide a tremendous service to the community, but both are in constant danger of not being able to meet expenses.
The Old Logandale School and the Old Overton Gym are not community centers, per se. Unlike the Community Centers in Overton and Moapa, these two facilities are not owned and operated by the county government and, thus, they don’t have the financial safety net of the taxpayers to fall back on in tough times. Rather, these important facilities are administered and managed by local boards of volunteer members. As such, they are heavily dependent on financial and volunteer support from the community.
The Old Logandale School has, over the years, developed a fairly stable network of grants which helps fund a paid staff to administer and maintain the building. This is a fairly bare-bones staff, however. The staff at the Old School is stretched thin; undoubtedly working far beyond their pay scale, mainly as a labor of love; keeping the building open as much as possible. But the little bit of grant money that the facility gets probably doesn’t scratch the surface on the expenses it takes to maintain and run the facility. To fill that gap they must come back to the community for help. Individual family annual memberships to the Old School are only about $30. Not all that much for an individual to pay. But, when it is all added up, this can provide tremendous assistance to the institution. All residents who have ever set foot into the Old Logandale School for an event or activity should make this small annual contribution and become a member of the Old Logandale School to help keep this valuable facility open and running.
The Old Overton Gym is in similar straits. It also offers a service that is vitally needed in the community. But it is a tremendously expensive service to provide. Like the Old School, the Old Overton Gym Board has been doing this on a mere shoe-string budget.The Gym is a heavily utilized facility. The Board reports that the building hosted over 23,000 people attending various activities during 2007 alone. And that is only its second year in operation. The Gym, in one respect, acts as a community recreation center hosting high school and middle school sports team practices, community wrestling leagues, dance and music classes, school proms and dances, as well as a multitude of CC Parks and Recreation programs and activities. It also acts as a meeting hall for the Moapa Valley Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce, MV Riders Club and other organizations. It has even been transformed into a concert hall for performances from groups like the MV Community Orchestra and Mormon Youth Symphony and Chorus. And, on the rare occasion when nothing else is scheduled, it is the goal of the Board to keep the building open as a place for Overton youth to gather and spend time together.
Unlike the Old School, however, the Gym has no funding for paid staff. The Gym is dependent on local volunteers to staff the building. Unfortunately, volunteers have been in short supply. For example, in January this year, the Gym logged a total of 92 volunteer hours; a considerable number to be sure. But the facility was scheduled for almost 200 hours of activities that month. It is easy to see a problem developing where the building gets more use than there are volunteers to manage it. Problems with vandalism and abuse have arisen at the Gym. Destructive, thoughtless, or just plain careless, people have caused expensive damage to the facility because there has not been adequate supervision at the Gym during some of the many daily activities. The knee-jerk remedy to this problem would be to restrict use of the facility. Many of the recreational uses of the building involving youth, which have taken the biggest toll on the facility, could be restricted if adequate supervision is not available. But Board members don’t like this option. It has been their goal from the beginning to have the facility open to the community as needed with as little restriction and red tape as possible. It is worth noting, by the way, that the Board has, thus far, accomplished this goal admirably.
Paid staff at the gym would be another solution to the problem. Board members applied for County grants this year in hopes of gaining a source of funding to hire paid staff at the facility. Unfortunately, economic conditions being what they are, no funding was granted to the organization.
The final hope for a solution to this problem is a drastic increase in volunteers at the Old Gym. Only a small group of people are currently performing the bulk of the volunteer hours at the facility. Most of it is done by Old Gym Board members. More volunteer help from the community is needed. If time is in short supply, financial support may also be offered. Century Club membership at the Old Gym is only $100 per year.
The Old Overton Gym and the Old Logandale School are used, almost exclusively, by the members of the Moapa and Moapa Valley communities. We derive tremendous benefit from these facilities and the benevolent organizations that administer them. These benefits are not free and they don’t come cheap. But if the costs are spread across a wide enough community base, they are manageable. It is up to this community to pay for those benefits. We shouldn’t expect anyone else to foot the bill for us. Moapa Valley residents should become more actively involved in supporting these organizations so that we can continue to enjoy their important venues for the culture and recreation of our community.
For information on how to help call the Old Overton Gym at 397-2002 or the Old Logandale School at 398-7272.
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