At 2 p.m. today, a handful of our elected leaders will hold a ceremonial groundbreaking for a swimming pool and ball fields for all the wrong reasons.

A few of the leaders — all incumbent Natchez aldermen — are hell bent on having a “Look at me” event prior to next month’s municipal elections.

Sadly, recreation isn’t about adults patting themselves on the backs or trying to garner votes.

Recreation improvements are supposed to be focused on the community as a whole and specifically on our children.

For generations, we’ve largely overlooked the importance of investing in public recreation. Our city’s ballparks exist to a large part on volunteer labor that keeps them functional, despite being outdated and no longer up to modern standards.

And perhaps only when a few elected officials saw the political gain that could be had — or perceived to be had — by hitching their political wagons to the recreation horse did the process move forward.

We’ve encouraged an approach to recreation that doesn’t merely build a piece of the complex, but that takes on the whole of recreation.

Perhaps the pool is the first stage of this, but based on the motivations of those aldermen who are having a groundbreaking ceremony for a structure that isn’t fully planned out yet, we fear the political games around recreation will continue into the future.

Let’s agree to a community wide plan that brings together all aspects of recreation and move out on it, no need to have the golden ceremonial shovels either. Such a plan could be community driven, not aldermen driven.