Recap: Santa Cruz Parks and Recreation Meeting
February 10, 2017
Last night’s special joint session of the Santa Cruz City Council and Parks and Recreation Commission overflowed from City Council Chambers into the neighboring Civic Auditorium. MBoSC would like to extend a huge thank you to those of you that attended to show and voice your support for the Draft Parks and Recreation 2030 Master Plan, which contains recommendations for new multi-use and mountain bike specific trails in City Parks. Our strong showing was clearly noted by Council and the Parks Commission. Mountain bikers dominated both written correspondence leading up to the meeting and comments during the meeting.
Council voted to send the draft plan to the Parks and Recreation Commission for further review. What does this mean? More meetings! The Commission will hold several study sessions to finalize and refine the plan. These meetings will be open to the public, so we will need to maintain this same level of engagement moving forward if we would like to see the proposed trail improvements make it into the final plan. The Commission hopes to submit the plan back to City Council in June for approval. We aren’t out of the woods yet, we need to demonstrate the need and value of these proposed trails. Please stay tuned to learn more about how you can help.
If you have not yet written in support of these efforts please do so. More info can be found here.
MBoSC would also like to recognize some of the other groups that spoke at last night's meeting. There was a strong presence of people who have been involved in the preservation of Pogonip since it was threatened by development in decades past, long before it entered into city ownership We commend the tireless work of the Sierra Club and the Friends of Pogonip, including former Mayor Celia Scott and her husband Peter. Their ongoing activism is inspirational.
Photo by David Smith
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