We have 30,323 school age children in montgomery county. 6,836 are in middle school and 8,202 are in high school. We have 2 movie theaters, 2 bowling alleys, 2 skating rings, and 1 mall. We need more options for our children. I believe if we had more things for them to do it would help keep them out of the streets which in turn would make for less drug use and gang activity and vandilism. We have 0 arcades, 0 batting cages, 0 go carts, 0 lazer tag. There are so many things that could be brought to our community that would be benificial to our youth. A sports plex would be a great idea. It would bring sports that are not available here at this moment such as hockey and ice skating. All of these things could help our community. When you listen to conversations that the kids today have when they are trying to find something to do it is just sad. It usually goes something like this: Lets do something, ok what, um i don't know do you have any ideas, um not really maybe go ride around, i don't have gas money lets just go to walmart and walk around. I have heard this personally more than once. Yes we do have 2 movies theaters but it cost about $15 a person to go and it only last about 2 hrs, teenagers can not afford that and neither can the parents especially if you have more than 1 child. There is the 2 bowling alleys but when leagues are playing your chances of getting a lane are slim and on the weekends theres a lot of drinking that goes on. We do have 2 skating rings but that is mainly geared toward elementary and middle school. There is the mall but if your not shopping they consider you to be loitering. The bottom line is with a town as big as Clarksville we should have more to offer the youth that live here. If there is nothing for them to do more than likely they will turn to drugs and gang activity simply because they don't have anything else to do. This is our future we are talking about and I believe we need to at least try to give them more options. Thank you for your time.
