Good news! Not the great news that we would like, but its a start. The Pease Park Master Plan (the one that leaves disc golf completely shut out of Pease Park), went before the first of five boards and commissions before it goes to the full Parks Advisory Board and then on to the City Council. This was a committee of the Parks Advisory Board made up of several Parks Board members. PARD presented the plan, pretty much the same presentation they gave to the community at the June public meeting, and was asking the committee to recommend approval to the full Parks Advisory Board. There were three members of the Pease Park Conservancy Board there to speak in favor of the plan. Chris Rodesney was there representing the UT Disc Golf Club and Jeremy Croak, Fishead Tim, and I were there representing Waterloo DG Club (and really, all four of us were there speaking for the whole Central Texas disc golf community). There was also one other person there questioning aspects of the plan and the process used. At the end of it, the committee did NOT approve recommending the plan! They didn’t vote it down either, but they didn’t approve it. They had some pointed questions and concerns about just exactly why PARD didn’t think disc golf was appropriate in a re-done Pease Park, and about who would govern and control the progress of work if the plan were passed. Ultimately, they decided to table the whole thing until September when PARD will have to answer all their concerns to try to win over their support. The bottom line of what we wanted from the committee (and thus from the Parks Board) was this: 1) direct PARD to revise the Master Plan to add disc golf back to Pease Park; 2) if not that, then take more time to learn about the issues and about why it would be such a good and important thing to bring back disc golf, slow the process down; 3) if neither of those things, then vote down the plan. We feel that there are lots of great things in this Master Plan, WRT (the company working up the plan) did a good job, but because PARD had already made the decision to lock us out, they weren’t even able to consider all the input and ideas for disc golf. And without disc golf included we believe it is an incomplete and/or bad Master Plan. All the wonderful ideas there can still be done even if the Master Plan isn’t officially approved, but if it passes without disc golf, the sport will likely never be able to return to the park. NO MASTER PLAN IS BETTER THAN A BAD OR INCOMPLETE MASTER PLAN. Again, not the best possible outcome from the meeting but not the worst one either, and it was nice finally to walk away from one of these Pease meetings not feeling disappointed, discouraged, and frustrated. We will continue to press our message and make our points at the rest of the meetings. Hopefully we win, maybe we lose, but either way we are going to keep trying and keep fighting. ~Gordon
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 03:58:32 +0000
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