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Phil Rambles, Phil Price blog.
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pnprice@creekcats.com
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Fri, 07 Nov 2003
Parks & Rec Commission
Hmm, somehow I seem to have failed to mention on this site that a few months ago I was appointed to the Berkeley Parks and Recreation Commission. I was appointed to a vacant seat by City Councilperson Dona Spring.
It's been interesting so far. There are so many different constituencies with interest in the city parks ("stakeholders", as they're called in the lingo): dog walkers, environmentalists, youth sports promoters, adult sports promoters, swimmers, picnic-ers, parents with playground-age kids, park neighbors, and on and on. Each group can (and sometimes, fortunately rarely, does) mobilize its troops to come out to a Parks & Rec committee meeting and argue for or against something or other.
Each group sees its desires as paramount: parents will tell us that if their kids don't get to use this particular facility in this particular way, then the kids will become depressed drug addicts and we will be to blame. Dog walkers will argue that 99% of dog walkers are law-abiding, responsible citizens who would never dream of (pick 1: letting their dog off-leash inappropriately; showing up at a dog park before opening time; allowing their dog to harass wildlife; failing to clean up after their dog; allowing their dog to dig in an inappropriate place). And so on, for every group I mentioned.
As with the citizenry, the commissioners are a diverse group and the arguments resonate differently with each of us. Some of us tend to be more sympathetic to the kids, some to the environmentalists, and so on. We just sort of muddle along---there's no agree-upon vision for what the park usage profile is supposed to look like.
Over the next year, I plan on visiting every Berkeley park at least once. I'm familiar with most of them, and know some of them quite well, but there are a few that I've never been to and others that I only vaguely recall.
The commission only meets once a month, for about three hours. There are about three hours of prep work for each meeting, and there are also infrequent subcommittee meetings on various topics. Overall it's probably an eight- to twelve-hour per month job, depending on how much effort I want to put into it. Not onerous, really.