Parks and Rec Meeting

Last night I had another meeting- as with tonight and tomorrow lunch. I am eating a lot of pizza and sandwiches from a variety of places. Last night was Padows, since I gave up dessert for Lent I had to pass my cookies on to someone who hadnt. Oh wait, this is not necessarily a post about food, where was I?

The agenda as always was aggressive we started with a wonderful presentation by the consultant hired to lead the master planning process for the area of McIntire Park where the YMCA will be built. Numerous public meetings and a charette will be held in the next three months to nail down a location and arrangement that the community will appreciate. If however no consensus is reached, the contract provides a default location on the adult baseball fields.

The ballfields have some serious allocation and space demands on them. We briefly discussed this issue, we all agree the County needs to pony up some ball fields asap since 88% of the users of these fields are from the County. The parks and rec department in the County has some great people, but the County just doesnt prioritize parks in the same way the City does. AS the County grows however the demand increases and hopefully parents and children will begin to demand a higher level of service from their Parks and Rec department (and the County generally since the funding is the issue).

Chris Gensic, all-around good guy presented the Master Plan outline for Rives Park - it looks great. There will be two playgrounds- one small children, the other older children, trails, a possible sand volleyball court, two shelters (instead of one) and great open space in the middle of the Park. The department has been master planning many neighborhood parks and Rives is just the latest. Forest Hills construction will begin in the Fall, the master plan for that park looks awesome, I am very excited about it. All of these master plans have been completed with considerable community involvement- I am pretty proud of the department for its commitment to engagement and essentially organic parks- the design grows out of the community is serves.