FRUSTRATION CAN LEAD to bad results and, frankly, our Hispanic neighbors need to get more community support to lessen one persistent irritation. Not only aren’t they going anywhere but by far the most of them are not “illegals.” They are Americans and if “different” largely so because their three most important interests are family, church and soccer instead of being, as with many of the rest of us, family, church and football.

It was really dumb for one of them to seek rezoning on a residential tract on Payne Road after having built a soccer facility there without permits. Needless to say, the Planning Commission said no and sent law enforcement there to make sure no further amateur soccer league matches would take place. However, there is very active such soccer play in this region, much of it at a high level of competition, and participants have long had a lot of trouble establishing their own “field of dreams.”

A bit of perspective, which certainly did not justify what was happening on Payne Road.

About four years ago local Hispanic investors sought to build an indoor soccer arena on Technology Parkway. The very same Planning Commission unanimously approved it. The City Commission deep-sixed the idea because the parkway was originally built to lure office complexes/factories not spectator sports.

Anybody been out to Technology Parkway lately? It is so continually traffic-free it should be converted to a competition-level drag strip. Some of the handful of buildings put up there already stand empty.

Our new neighbors shouldn’t break laws to get what they want but neither should those already here use laws to keep them from having what they need and will use.

What’s the Greater Rome motto? Oh yes: Working together works.