Date: 2006-06-14
Speaker: TOM DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Virginia

Mr. Chairman. I appreciate my friend taking the amendment out of turn. I rise in opposition to the Flake amendment. The $50.000 that Mr. FLAKE is trying to strike would go to the Fairfax County Park Authority to renovate fields in Annandale. Virginia. Baileys Crossroads. Seven Corners. Culmore in the Mason District. is just inside the Capital Beltway in Northern Virginia. Like many areas. they are experiencing significant problems with gangs. They have a heavy immigrant population. and thousands of lowincome. lowcost apartments. I might add. open space is at a premium in these areas. One way we can make a positive impact on the gang problem is to give the kids something to do. and that is just what we are trying to accomplish with this particular earmark. The playing fields in question are used by youth athletic leagues that bring kids in. offering them any number of positive experiences as alternatives to joining gangs and keeping them out of trouble. This is a much more urbanized part of Fairfax County. It may be in the aggregate a wealthy county. but I cart tell you the people that this impacts are the lowest of the low in terms of their incomes. But we have apartments in this Seven Corners area where you have two or three families living in twobedroom apartments. This is a more urbanized part of the county. The county has over a million people. Open space is at a premium. Just a couple of years. ago. a soccer field where immigrants used to play soccer was displaced by an Eckerd Drug Store. depriving them of other fields. And gang activity in the Culmore area has thrived. Northern Virginia is rapidly expanding. With every passing year. there are fewer and fewer places for young people to engage in constructive outdoor activity. And the kids that this affects do not have cars. they cannot take mass transit. they cannot afford taxicabs. This is an area where they can get to and be able to find some alternative to joining a gang and joining into illegal activity. With every passing day. there seem to be more and more ways for them to get into trouble. Athletic activity is one of the best alternatives to gang activity. There is an old saying. "You can pay me now or you can pay me later." This investment. if it just saves one kid from a life of crime and a career in the prison system. will be well worth the dollars in this particular case. But in my district. our constituents frequently tell me there are pressing needs. can we help out over and above what they might be able to get in the political process? A lot of the people that this helps generally have been powerless at the ballot box. they have been unable to get it through the usual allocation of park authority funds. which tend to go out to wealthier areas. Under the HUD portion of this bill. that is where this earmark comes from. There are programs that are supposed to be used to fund revitalization programs. That is exactly what this is. in the Annandale. Baileys Crossroads area. This project is good use of these dollars. This project. I think. will help the young people in our district turn away from the influence of gangs and get them into more constructive activities. More importantly. I think it is an investment in the future. So it is for these reasons in this particular case that I rise to oppose the Flake amendment. Mr. Chairman. I would just reiterate that putting one kid into a gang with the crimes that could be committed and a life in the prison system is worth a lot more than the $50.000 that we have asked for and earmark in this bill that will improve these fields and make them available to a wide array of young people. Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.