Short-sighted view on lights

Parks and Recreation Commission Chairwoman Wendy Leece’s May 11 Community Commentary on the Farm Sports Complex is revealing and tragically short-sighted.

Leece ? a presumed City Council candidate ? offers, “If we need four [fields], let’s say so. If we need six, then say so.” This is cause for wonder: Does Leece ? a member of the parks and recreation commission for nearly four years ? know how many fields Costa Mesa needs? She would if she had ever read the Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Master Plan or the California State Department of Parks and Recreation’s guidelines.

Had Leece done so, she’d also know that the two additional fields proposed at the Fairview Developmental Center, which she presumes to be a certainty, are not nearly sufficient to close the city’s athletic field deficit.

Leece then seems to imply some kind of underhanded agenda on my part, claiming that “all of a sudden my fellow commissioner Byron de Arakal decided we needed two more (fields) at the Farm Sports Complex.” All of a sudden? Where has Leece been the last three and a half years?

Let’s be clear. Costa Mesa is not a city that is going to suddenly stop growing. Between 1990 and 2000, our population of children age 5 to 9 years grew by 31%. Our population of youngsters 10 to 14 nearly doubled. And, our collection of young people age 15 to 19 swelled by nearly 40%.

It is stunningly short-sighted of any of our city leaders to expect Costa Mesa to even remotely succeed in providing for the existing and future recreational needs of our community given our current athletic field inventory. If the expectation is that we can, given our city’s joint-use agreement with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, then we are completely ignorant of or ignoring altogether the fact that we are barely meeting even our current demand under the joint-use agreement. Nevermind that it is bad community policy to invest millions of taxpayer dollars in athletic facilities the city doesn’t own, and which could become unavailable for use should the district opt out of the agreement at some point.

Lighting two additional fields at the Farm Sports Complex is a logical and reasonable investment in city-owned land that is just one step in a long journey to ensure that the parks and recreation needs of our community are met today and in the future.

It’s unfortunate that Leece ? particularly as the sitting chairwoman of the city’s parks and recreation commission ? doesn’t recognize that.