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April 5, 2004 <br />TO: City Councilors, Mayor's Advisory Committee on Parks, Planning Commissioners, Oregon Chapter of <br />American Planner's Association, and State Landscape Architect Board <br />FM: Mary O'Brien, Citizens for Public Accountability <br />CC: Carolyn Weiss, Andrea Reiner, Johnny Medlin <br />RE: City Planning, Decision Making, and Information Availability: AMAZON PARK <br />Currently, the City of Eugene has more than $6 million of unissued bonds to be spent from a parks bond <br />passed in 1998. Because the bond was passed during a time of economic prosperity and currently voters are <br />more reticent to pass levies or bond measures, it is imperative that these remaining dollars be spent with <br />attention to data - driven and community-wide interests. <br />The city paid for a survey last year that indicates that people are interested in purchasing more land, <br />protecting natural areas, and maintaining what we have. As the Amazon Park is currently undergoing a <br />planning process, citizens have raised issues of concern regarding delayed maintenance of current amenities <br />and the desire to protect the natural areas. The city park planning staff on the other hand has been promoting <br />expensive, large- space, single -use development rather than providing upgrades to the park that are long <br />overdue and would benefit more people on a daily basis. <br />Because the city park planners have not been able to adequately address citizen questions about park usage or <br />costs at citizen involvement meeting:or on the website, concerned citizens have requested information on <br />usage and costs to determine what information is being used by city park planners to create priorities and <br />make decisions. <br />The following information was requested from the city at a meeting on December 16 2004 with Carolyn <br />Weiss and Andrea Reiner both park planners and their manager, Johnny Medlin. While some information <br />was provided, we have learned from park managers that as a whole, information on usage, costs, and other <br />data requested ( #1 -5 in italics below) does not exist or would require "extensive research" according to the <br />lead planner of Amazon Park. Our concern then is: what are planners using to make decisions, if not basic <br />information about park use? <br />1. USAGE: <br />A. Determine Amazon Park acreage and building space devoted to different types of activities <br />and approximate annual hours of usage of these spaces. Both organized and daily recreational <br />activities should be accounted for. Include any fields or courts maintained by the City. <br />B. Estimate vehicle presence associated with different usages. <br />C. Estimate lighting power (e.g., height, brightness) associated with different usages. <br />While staff did provide a map of differing uses, no information is available on the numbers or how <br />people use the park on a daily basis. There are some organized - sports data on use of developed field <br />usage, but only the softball schedule is on -line. On -line scheduling of soccer fields for all city- owned, <br />shared or maintained fields should be as readily reviewable as the softball schedule. <br />Thus the only information available on park usage is for organized /scheduled sports: softball, <br />soccer /ultimate, and swimming. Because we have numbers for these recreational activities while no <br />other numbers for comparison to non - organized recreational activities, park planners misinform <br />citizens with one -sided data. <br />In addition, the staff was unable to provide data on vehicular use of the parking lots. However, staff <br />sent some sketchy car usage of non - paved, grassy park areas showing that Roosevelt Middle School <br />would have easily accommodated all use of this delineated wetland for "overflow pool parking." <br />