Has the city reneged on an agreement with the Beach & Park District? According to the comments by the District commissioners this week, the city has not cooperated with the District based upon an agreement 2 years ago regarding allowing the District to expand the De Hornle park with 4 additional soccer fields. The city has provided a plan for this land adjacent to the southeast section of the park which indicates a police gun range and "skid track" instead of the 4 soccer fields. These plans illustrated 2 smaller fields adjacent to the park, but not as big as the soccer fields expected in the agreement. Who in the city had the horrible idea of placing a gun range next to a city park?
In exchange for the expansion of the De Hornle park land, the District promised to build artificial turf fields at patch reef park (or other city parks). The District has funds budgeted for the expansion of the De Hornle park (across from the library on Spanish River Blvd.) and the upgrading of 3 soccer fields, but based upon comments at Monday's District meeting there are probably not a majority of commissioners who support spending $3 million for artificial turf since the city has not lived up to their part of the agreement.
There was also discussion about placing the artificial turf on another field, Lake Wyman park, which does not have good drainage and would naturally make more sense since this would increase the usefulness of this field. But, since the city owns this park the District would need the cooperation of the city via another inter-local agreement. Considering the lack of cooperation between the District and the city it is doubtful that they will cooperate on the Ocean Breeze property unless something significant changes / will the two city-backed(?) new commissioners to the District help with the relationship after their installation in January?
No comments:
Post a Comment