Hopefuls chime in on parks

Seven of the nine Costa Mesa City Council hopefuls attended Tuesday’s heated debate on whether to ban team sports in almost all city parks, and all had strong opinions on the issue.

After hours of debate, the council voted unanimously against instating staff recommendations that would have made organized activities with nine or more people illegal in 28 out of 30 city parks. Before it was voted down, staff spent more than 400 hours working on the proposal, Public Services Director Peter Naghavi said.

Bill Sneen and Chris McEvoy spoke at the podium; Katrina Foley and Eric Bever sat on the dais; and Lisa Reedy, Nick Moss and Chris Bunyan listened from the audience. None thought the blanket proposal on the table was a good one.

When they prepared their report suggesting which parks should be listed as “passive” and “active,” city staff did not have a clear notion of what the City Council wanted, Sneen said.

Most parks were not being abused, and the issue was propagated by a small group of people making complaints, according to Sneen.

“The problem was only identified by a limited number of people, and it was really blown out of proportion,” he said.

Sneen called the action by Mayor Pro Tem Allan Mansoor to try and postpone discussion of the issue an obvious attempt at trying to limit community involvement and lauded Councilwomen Linda Dixon, Wendy Leece and Foley for their opposing Mansoor and Bever on the motion, which failed, 3-2.

More people need to be involved in the process if the city is considering something as big as banning team sports in parks, according to McEvoy, Sneen and Reedy.

“To do that to a park, maybe we should get a minimum amount of people here to discuss it,” McEvoy said. “Even the city manager said that if one person complains enough, it becomes a problem.”

“The parks belong to the residents,” Reedy said.

Sneen and McEvoy said making formal designations of what people can and can’t do in the parks on a city level is too much regulation. It should be up to the communities to work out their problems.

Reedy, Moss and Bunyan said any sort of proposal to ban activities in a park should be brought up individually by neighbors and discussed with plenty of community involvement.

“Blanketing non-problem parks is a bad idea. Designating a majority of parks as passive is too much governmental interference. All park patrons deserve a safe park experience,” Bunyan said.

Candidates Jim Righeimer and Gary Monahan were not at the meeting, but both said some parks should be off limits to team sports; they added, however, that those parks should be identified and considered separately, not as part of a big package deal. Righeimer cited Paularino as one that should be passive, and Monahan brought up Canyon Park.

“There are several parks citywide that should be passive, but several shouldn’t, and the problem was that it was an all or nothing proposal,” Monahan said.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.