We do it every day. They are frequently not easy choices, but we do these things because they are the right thing to do.

Through our actions, we pay our debt to the community that supports and includes us. It is among the simple requirements of citizenship of which Bath has numerous examples.

Last week the Bath City Council indeed acted boldly, and for this they are to be loudly applauded. Spurred on by the strikingly articulate, well thought-out and impassioned arguments of nearly two dozen teen members of the skate park community — and a few of us just a little older — the council set aside differences and agreed that the Bath Skatepark and Youth Meetinghouse deserves a permanent home in the renovated armory.

The Bath Skatepark and Youth Meetinghouse, a public private hybrid organization with the Bath Recreation Department, is a great program with a strong history. It does precisely what its mission statement says, “To create and sustain a state-of-theart youth meetinghouse and skate park which provides hands on self expression in a safe, positive, nurturing environment.”

It is no less profound than that and this place deserves a viable, sustainable plan in its new, permanent home. None can argue that the skate park yields benefits to our community far beyond its half-pipes, ramps and curbs.

Despite the celebration, there is significant uncertainty ahead. The same evening, after the students went home, the City Council voted to move the management of the armory from the likely team run by Bath Recreation Department director Steve Balboni to an as-yet uncreated management company similar to that which operates the Customs House.

While it is understandable that Bath city councilors should not spend their limited and largely volunteer time on property management, one has to question whether the added bureaucratic layer is really needed.

After all, “ The Rec” and other city departments have ample building management experience, and the armory will have been recently renovated with contemporary systems and brought up to the mandated standards and codes.

What is the true motivation of Councilor Kyle Rogers’ motion when it is clear that the armory’s function will be largely non-commercial? How will this new entity structure rents? Will the skate park be granted an in- perpetuity lease with token rent?

What if the management levies rents to cover a full share of building operations? Will the soon- to- be created entity seek market-rate leases pushing out community groups like the skate park? Is the true motivation to ensure that the property becomes a future sale prospect?

As the councilors, in its role as the Bath Development Corporation, creates the bylaws for this new entity, they must continue to view constituent users such as the skate park with the hope and optimism with which they acted last week. The continued future of the skate park relies on them, and their focus must remain on the big picture.

In many ways we are a working class town in a world where working class is different than it once was. At one time — in my lifetime — a working man was s shipwright, truck driver or built a railroad. Today it also means families with two working parents with at least one job each and frequently more.

Our economy has driven families to eliminate entertainment while working longer hours for less money. The result of this has been the continued shrinkage of “home time” where parents and children do things together.

The day when a parent was always there to greet her or his kids after school has long gone the way of “Leave it To Beaver,” “The Brady Bunch” or even “Mad Men.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that both parents work in 48 percent of American households in which the parents are married. If they are both working full time, this is more than 4,100 hours annually that parents not available to their children.

If children attend 180 or so days of school with around 1,000 hours of classroom and extracurricular time, there is a parent involvement gap measured in thousands of hours annually. This is time that our children, especially middle and high school age kids, are without the stimulation and supervision of their parents or caretakers.

Statistics show that juvenile misbehavior largely occurs between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., related to — very simply — bored teens.

Bath Police Chief Mike Fields shares that in the nineyear period from 2001 to 2010 juvenile arrests have dropped as much as 40 percent. The skate park is a major contributor to this improvement.

The skate park has served as a venue to intercept alleged and potential crime because kids and staff exist in an environment where they are comfortable confiding in one other. Because of this confidence, there have been more than a dozen calls to the Bath Police Department for crime and crisis intervention from the skate park just since 2009.

No two kids are the same. Not every child will fit into traditional sports or academic programs after school. It is our obligation as citizens to meet their needs because learning doesn’t stop when the school bell rings.

It is very simple. For some people, meeting their needs now is not only the right thing to do but it is far less expensive than processing them through the courts, housing them in detention or supervising them after their release.

If for no other reason, this is a matter of community economics as much as it is social and education policy, and it makes an investment in the skate park look even better.

Having made the case for the skate park, I also believe the organization’s board should continue to participate, with the support and assistance of the city’s team, in a meaningful funding role. Let the private part of this public-private hybrid build equity to support the programming because there can be no free rides.

Pay it forward. The Bath City Council has taken a huge and meaningful step in answering this call but they must see the job through to its end.

Completion of the job calls for them to make far harder decisions than they did last week. The choices to come won’t necessarily garner points at ballot box, but this is a time when it is far more important to do the right thing than to do that which may be popular in the moment.

Pay it forward. It’s what we do here in Bath.

ROO DUNN lives in Bath.