The townspeople need public tennis courts. They need courts that are easily accessible and not restricted by school hours or expensive memberships—where they can play tennis on their own schedule, determined only by the availability of the local courts.

Those local courts are located in Blossom Hill Park. And there's a plan afoot now to take three of the six courts and convert them into a temporary skatepark.

As much as we would like to support that proposal in the interest of the town's youth, we cannot. It's a simple matter of solving one problem by creating another.

The claim that the Blossom Hill courts are underutilized may well be true—some of the time. But there are times when all six courts are in use simultaneously with other players waiting on the sidelines for court time. That situation would only be exacerbated by reducing the number of available courts to three for any long period of time.

The term underutilized is an interesting one. Is Oak Meadow Park underutilized because there are only a few people there on a weekday mornings during the school year? Is the Little League diamond at Blossom Hill Park underutilized because it's only used during the baseball season? Are the town council chambers underutilized because meetings are only conducted there a couple of days a week?

Certainly not. Those facilities have to be available when they are needed. And the same can be said for the public tennis courts.

To deprive tennis players of a place to play, just to solve another problem facing the town, is simply not fair. And to set up a skatepark on those courts as a pilot program to determine the need for a permanent site doesn't seem fair either—if the site becomes as popular as everyone believes it will be, tennis players will be inconvenienced that much longer while the town looks for a skatepark permanent location and completes construction.

What would seem fair is for the town to come up with a solid plan for a skatepark for its youth—somehow, somewhere, but quickly. The kids deserve it.

So the challenge before the town is to make that decision, find a logical site and get the wheels rolling. Determine a completion date that has the project completed in months, not years.

In the meantime, set up a skatepark temporarily in the Blossom Hill tennis courts with a reasonable timetable for its removal and the completion of the permanent facility for skaters.

The young people would have a skating facility, and the tennis players would keep three of their six courts with the prospect of getting all of the courts back within a reasonable period of time.

It's called compromise, and everyone wins.