Ice rink improves Carson City's quality of life

(Editor's note: The following was presented to the Carson City Board of Supervisors during public comments at the Oct. 7 meeting by Star Anderson, General Manager, Carson Nugget)

Quality of life not the immediate financial impact are my comments from the Nuggets perspective. I would like to dovetail on some things that Roger and Ms. Walt commented on by saying, “What does the ice rink offer and why does the Carson Nugget Care?” The Carson Nugget has not seen any recognizable increase of course in our gaming. People do not bring their children in to game. Have they come in to eat? That’s possible although we haven’t seen enough increase in the days and the times that the ice rink is open to affirmatively say “yes definitely this increase is because of the ice rink”. So why do we care?

Well, we have a “Community First” mantra that we have been sporting for quite some time. We firmly believe that the benefits to the community as well as the quality of life will build a stronger core. We wear these little buttons (points to a button on her name badge) that say “Community First” because we believe if we have a stronger community then businesses, from a Carson Nugget view point, will have a greater chance of continued success if we consistently nourish a strong base community. If people are happy, people are living in the city and people are having a good quality of life, they will thrive.

Now I don’t have any numbers to offer you from a “dollars and cents” viewpoint but I did go online and I did some research myself in order to get a little bit of an idea of how to explain myself. We have been talking about quality of life and using that as something for the ice rink over the last couple of years. This is why the Carson Nugget cares. We do believe that a higher quality of life; offering things for people to do will center any neighborhood or any community. The stronger that is, the better chances for success for everyone.

We all know that is hard to make objective or long term measurements about what the quality of life is experienced by other countries or even other communities. That is one of the things that is really hard to pin down. One of the things that is used is called a human development index and that measures life expectation, education and standard of living in an attempt to qualify the options available to individuals in a given society; and when I continued reading, it said the better the quality of life provided for the people the longer the life expectancy and a healthier life that is.

There is also something called the physical quality of life index that was developed by a sociologist named Morris in the 1970’s. This index says the quality of life impacts basic literacy, infant mortality rates and life expectancy. The physical quality of life has been shown to not be as complex as other indexes and has been replaced by the HDI. However it was Morris’ attempt to show a “less fatalistic and less pessimistic picture” by focusing on three areas where, globally, the quality of life was generally improving at the time and ignored GNP (now similar to GDP) and other possible economic indicators that were not improving. So, in spite of the economic fluctuations, we still have to look at the quality of life. It is very important.

I pulled some information that ranked the United States 13th in a recent study on the quality of life; even though our GDP per person was higher than all but one of the countries that ranked a better quality of life than the U.S. So, as you can see, it’s not all about “the money”.

As final comments I would look at the three major life domains that are identified by the University of Toronto as being, belonging and becoming. The “belonging” segment speaks about a community quality of life.

“Belonging includes the person’s fit with his/her environments and also has three sub-domains. Physical Belonging is defined as the connections the person has with his/her physical environments such as home, workplace, neighborhood, school and community. Social Belonging includes links with social environments and includes the sense of acceptance by intimate others, family, friends, co-workers and neighborhood and community.

Community belonging represents access to resources normally available to community members, such as adequate income, health and social services, employment, education and recreational programs, and community activities.” (Quality of Life Research Unit, University of Toronto). The Ontario Social Development Council also links community to the quality of life. “As social development organizations, our goal is to improve the quality of life in our communities by promoting optimal conditions for human and social development and sustaining them for future generations. The purpose of the Quality of Life Index (QLI) is to provide a tool for community development which can be used to monitor key indicators that encompass the social, health, environmental and economic dimensions of the quality of life in our communities. The QLI can be used to comment frequently on key issues that affect people and contribute to the public debate about how to improve the quality of life in our communities and our nation. It is intended to monitor conditions which affect the living and working conditions of people and focus community action on ways to improve health.”

What I see at the Carson Nugget when it’s operating, because I do go look at it, and it is beautiful. I see people there having a good time with smiles on their faces I have talked to employees and guests who think that the ice rink is a very nice thing because it gives them something to do. I have talked to some people who say, dovetailing back to what Ms. Walt had mentioned, it is affordable. It is affordable for a family to go and have some fun at the ice rink. In closing, what I’d like to say for the Carson Nugget is that we are here again this year to say that based upon those things that if the community wants the BOS wants we will once again volunteer to give you our parking lot free of charge this year. Thank you very much.