November Meeting Minutes

We met at Satchmos! Yum!

Steve Zimmerman spoke about the park redesign plan.  The plan is still loosely as outlined at the last meeting.  He has a design firm working on a site plan that is due the first week in December.  It will probably look much like the concept plan with only Phase I items.  A couple of differences exist between the concept plan and the current plan.

1.  The new playground will not be covered as was specified in the concept plan.  

2.  I believe the term "amphitheater"  was used at some point in the concept plan--it is now just a large ramada.  He mentioned they may look into raising it above the surroundings.

3.  Not exactly in Phase I--but the current plan for the fitness court is to have a concrete surface rather than a special surface.  Steve has identified a potential source of funding that he mentioned to Sen. Begay for the project.

4.  ADA playground.  Steve says all playgrounds in the city park system have been certified to be ADA compliant.  The mostly likely surface for the new playground will be woodchips which he says are compliant.  He says the new equipment won't look like the existing playgrounds in the system--but they will be ADA compliant.

They are completely re-doing the horseshoe pit and probably the volleyball court in the next week or so.  The new dog park is finished -- and the existing bathrooms have been switched to unisex.  The plan is to leave them open all winter (between about 9 and dusk)

Apparently the parks and rec commission expressed concern that momentum for this issue had died (I have the same concern).  Steve thought the time maybe has come to try to get people to start writing to city council and the mayor about this issue.  He also talked about having another public meeting where he brought in some photos etc of what playground and fitness equipment they were considering as well as present the site plan.  He is going to get back to me on whether he decides to do that.  

Officer Durbin said that overall crime was down still.  The calls for this month include transient/alcoholics, fighting, and a transient bothering a young kid.  He also wanted folks to be aware that they have had issues with Skimmer devices in gas pumps around town.  These are devices that steal your credit card info.  The best defense is to use credit cards (which have fraud protection) instead of debit cards and to check your accounts often to make sure you don't have fraudulent charges on them.

So we decided to shoot for a holiday gathering at Bushmaster at 2 pm on Dec 15--maybe a Christmas Cookie exchange?