Children run through sprinklers for hours in the summer. They know how to adjust the water pressure for the optimum fun effect. Adults might catch a quick sprinkler spray to cool down, but they do not linger.

The splash pads planned for Spokane parks are really just a set of sprinklers gone wild. So it makes sense to ask the experts – our children – which sprinkler styles offer the most fun. Splash pads are manufactured with many options. Water bars, for instance, emit “multiple streams of water from a horizontal cross bar.” While the water funnel tree has three arms that spray with “morning glory nozzle effects.”

Last fall, adults in Spokane overwhelmingly passed a $42.9 million bond to replace aging outdoor pools and build 10 splash pads. Though it’s February and snow lingers on the ground, the Spokane Parks Department is in planning mode for the splash pads. The department wants input from the adults who will pay for the pools bond, and this week and next, splash pad planning meetings will be held in the evenings in neighborhoods throughout the city.

But much of the input will come from the children, who will use these neighborhood splash pads. This week, young people in after-school programs at six Spokane schools, as well as Chase Youth Commission kids, will meet with parks employees and pool consultants.

”(Children) are amazingly candid with you,” said Roger Crum, interim parks and recreation director. “They see right through to what they want. They are not concerned with neighborhood politics.”

This outreach, which will continue throughout the planning of all the bond-funded pools, will guarantee that the splash pads and pools get built with kids’ needs in mind. Even better, the inclusion of young people will expose them to the public meeting process.

Civic involvement, like any healthy habit, can be taught and role-modeled. Young people this week will be deciding between water bars and water funnel trees using some of the same skills their parents used in Saturday caucuses to decide whether they want Clinton or Obama or McCain or Huckabee or Paul.

From splash pads to presidents, now there’s a civic slippery slope we can enjoy year-round.