| Citizens
provide input into parks plan
By
Meg Olson
Continuing
on the recent trend of neighborhood solidarity, close
to a dozen Montfort Park area residents came before city
council to voice their opposition to a public-use trail
in their neighborhood. “Nobody wants it,” said
Sandro Westermayer, who at their September 13 meeting gave
council a request to relocate the trail signed by close
to 50 of his neighbors. “Please don’t take
it through our neighborhood.”
The
trail is part of the city’s new comprehensive
parks and recreation plan, introduced to city council
August 23. The plan is intended to be a “guide
to the acquisition, planning, and development of parks
and recreation in the city of Blaine,” an inventory
of what the city has, and recommendations for what it
needs. Council scheduled a public hearing for September
27, leaving a month to let residents give their feedback
on the plan.
Westermayer’s
recommendation is to have the proposed harbor loop trail
skip Montfort Park and stay on Peace Portal Drive until
Bell Road. His reasons include public safety, privacy,
and a lack of facilities or “other
rewards” for visitors using the trail. The current
proposal would have the trail come off Peace Portal
Drive and cross the railroad tracks onto Bayview Avenue,
which is not at this time a legal crossing. Continuing
along Bayview the trail would pass through Montfort
Park and Harborside Estates, ending up in a proposed
park at the mouth of Dakota Creek.
What
Westermayer and his neighbors would like to see, he said,
was more city support for their efforts to keep the park
clean and add a few amenities to make it more amenable – a
few benches along the shore, or a garbage can. “I
don’t think it’s any effort,” he
said. “Clean
it up and people can use it.”
Gary
Bell, a Bayview Avenue resident, said that heavier
traffic through the park would be created by a multi-use
trail. “It’s somewhat a nature reserve,” he
said, adding that the park was home to nesting
bald eagles, a haven for migrating songbirds and an
array of other wildlife.
City
community and economic development director Terry Galvin
said the trail illustrated in the plan was more a suggestion
than a solid proposal, and it was public input that would
shape plans for parks and recreational facilities within
the city. “This plan is
not set in stone,” he
said. “Neighborhoods will play a huge
role.”
Beyond
parks and trails, Westermayer’s
submission to council included concerns that
the anticipated construction of up to 100 homes
following recent property transfers would mandate
many changes to the area between Peace Portal
Drive and Drayton Harbor, now only accessible
by the Hughes Street railroad crossing and
relatively sparsely developed. |
