Yesterday the Fulton-El Camino Recreation and Park District cut ribbon on a beautiful new court soccer facility at Howe Park. The new courts upgrade and replace two tennis courts that had fallen into disrepair. The project was a gift from the Sac Republic Football Club, the local USL team that plays at Heart Health Field at CalExpo, Local businessmen Roger Niello and Tim Cahill, Sac State, Supervisor Rich Desmond's Office (using his district's Transient Occupancy Taxes*), and the International Rescue Committee also donated/contributed to the project. Sac Republic and their partners wanted to target Howe Park because of its significance to the West Arden Arcade Environmental Justice Area and the large numbers of Afghan refugees in the area. The courts are expected to be very popular for soccer enthusiasts. We hear the park district will be putting together a competitive league for the courts in the near future. This is a great facility that our humble unincorporated community is fortunate to have and can really be proud of. Kudos to all  who made this happen!!

*Each supervisor has a limited amount of discretionary funds from Transient Occupancy Taxes to use for projects in their district. Supervisor Desmond opted to use a large portion of District 3 funds for this project. Our newsroom elves have been frantically searching for information on whether, if ever, our prior District 3 County Supervisors might have spent their discretionary funds to make Arden Arcade better like this. So far they have come up empty. Here's hoping Supervisor Desmond has started a new trend!