In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes litt

The argument given is about Mason City resident’s recreational activities and some suggestions about improving bad condition of Mason River. The author says that water sports is favorite activity of Mason city people and they rarely use Mason river for that because the river's water quality is bad and the park facilities are ignoring it.The city government also have low budget for maintenance of river and therefore that budget should be increased for better improvements. The argument does sound convincing on first look, but is flawed because of many assumptions made by author.

Firstly, the author initially stated that the city park devotes little of its budget to maintain ace of river and assumes that the bad maintenance is main cause for people not using the river for water sports. There are a lot of things that are needed for water sports like for boating one requires boats with good condition and other necessary instruments. So it is possible that such facilities are not available near the river and that’s why people aren't using river. So by making that assumption the author is denying many such possibilities and weakening the conclusion.

Similarly, in next sentences the author stated that the rivers water quality is bad and assumed that improving that would definitely increase use of river for water sports by Mason City people. There is a possibility that after improving rivers water quality there might not be any fish remaining in it and therefore no people will go there for fishing. So there are lots of such possibilities which weaken the argument and author should have considered them instead of making assumption.

In the same manner, in final sentences the author again made an assumption that increasing the amount of budget for park maintenance will improve the facilities and maintenance at park. There are many cases of corruption in politics happened already and still happen. The budget after increment might not be fully utilized and can be used by corrupt people for their own. If such things happen the park river may not be improved at all. Therefore author should have given some alternative options for park improvements and by not stating that have exacerbated the argument.

Conclusively, the argument may seem very cogent at beginning but is flawed with many stated and unstated assumptions. The author used these assumptions to further support his conclusion and failed to consider many circumstances as stated in recent passages, while considering them would have made the argument much convincing.