Back in November, 2000, one of the first acts that I committed as a new Seattleite was to vote in support of the Pro Parks levy. IMHO, this levy has done great things for Seattle’s parks. Practically every time I’m at a park, I see a sign boasting that X project was completed with funds from the Pro Parks levy. And if you don’t believe me, just take a look at this project list, which impressively covers everything from Ballard Commons Park to Cal Anderson Par
k, reservoirs, p-patches, the Burke-Gilman and the Arboretum. Go parks!
To my great delight, I learned today that the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department is soliciting feedback via an online survey. Park-user input will help shape the department’s “Parks Legacy Plan.” The survey is being administered by DHM Research, a neutral third party. They hope to assess:
- Whether parks resources are deployed in the most effective manner;
- Which facilities and parks get the most use; and
- What are the core services Parks provides?
Take it here! It’s quick. It’s meaningful. And you get to answer this question, which for me was the most fun:
If you had $100 to spend on parks and recreation in the City of Seattle, how would you spend your money? [Allocate a portion of your money accordingly]:
- Acquiring new park land and open space
- Improvements to existing parks, such as updating sports fields and replacing old play equipment
- Building new parks
- Routine maintenance of existing parks
Thanks! I put in an ask for more disc golf, the course at northgate is very well used.
More dog parks, definitely. Households with dogs outnumber households with children by at least a third and should be represented proportionately. Dogs add to the quality of life in general and studies prove their contributions to a community’s safety, mental/physical health, reduced stress, and ability to bring individual community members together. Agility equipment, made either from natural materials (logs, etc.) and/or recycled materials (appropriate recycled playground equipment, ropes, tires, for example), and rinse off hoses near the gate would be the dream.
Wasn’t there supposed to be a playpark in Gas Works? I recall I levy that was passed in order to do this.
I wonder, what’s the ratio of rats to people? Have we given even passing consideration to their needs, while planning our parks? Sure looks like an opportunity for Seattle to be a leader among cities on this one, which seems to be a common preoccupation with our city council.
Seriously, if we want to spend money on dog parks, fine, but the ratio of children to dogs has nothing to do with it. Children are people, and their development and experiences will make our future what it will be. Dogs are pets.
I definitely prefer more play areas for children. The sandbox-in-the-planting-strip idea discussed here a few weeks ago may turn out OK, but I still worry that it is unsafe.
So if Parks is setting priorities on what to do with finite resources, I hope they will acquire additional small parcels of land that can be made into safe play areas for kids. That’s the investment that matters for the future..
Also, something I liked about the survey is that you can allocate the hypothetical $100. So it doesn’t have to be Only X versus Only Y: in my case, I can “spend” $75 for creating new play areas and $25 for creating new off-leash areas. I like this as a way of simultaneously expressing my top priority while also supporting a preference that others in my community have. Cool!
Last figures I heard were that only about 1/3 of dogs in the city are actually licensed. This seems to imply that many dogs are not paying their taxes! 🙂
Seriously, off-leash areas represent a single purpose use that renders park property unfit for use by any other users. Wallingford is extremely short on open space. It seems the best use of our limited open space is to try to maintain it as multi-use, not slice it up and segregate areas for use by special interests.
Re: Comment #2: Dogs should have “proportional representation” with children? This has to be one of the most absurd comments I’ve even read from a dog-lover. The sense of entitlement of some,( not all, but many,) dog-owners never ceases to amaze me.
Listen: I know kids can be ill behaved and obnoxious at times, but they’re still CHILDREN. As in, OUR SPECIES AND OUR OFFSPRING. And I can guarantee you dog owners will never have to worry about being BITTEN by my child. And for that matter, you won’t have to worry about her taking a dump on the playground lawn. And if she ever did, I would actually pick it up. Too bad we can’t say the same for so many dog owners.
I have long advocated for more off-leash areas in Seattle, especially at Gasworks
Park. If the area closest to the beach area could go off-leash rogue for an hour
or so daily, the geese would leave and the area would be available for picnics and
gatherings. So much more humane than gassing the geese!
I agree with Maria.
@Donn: 😀
@hayduke, pass on the crystall ball please.
@maria: +1
OK, now we’re talking about giving a dog some honest work, which everyone knows can be very fulfilling for dog and owner as well. But don’t just let them run around and hope some of them chase the geese. Train a Parks employee to work with dogs, at regularly scheduled wild goose chases. Dogs would have to pass some preliminary tests or something to be admitted into the day’s chase.
As a non-dog lover, I’d actually be thrilled with off-leash areas in our neighborhood, and would be happy to contribute, so that dog owners would stop running their dogs off leash at Meridan and Wallingford parks. They scare my children and it’s illegal.
I so agree with Neighbor. Let’s invest in an off-leash area at Gasworks so we can get dogs out of Wallingford Park. Then let’s actually clamp down on the illegal off-leash dogs at said park. That’s a children’s play area. Maybe more of us need to be vocal with dog owners at the park, but help by making sure there is a place for dogs to go.
I agree with 14. To those ends, dog people could do some work to realize the Gas Works Off-Leash Dog Dream; the rest of us can enter the Animal Control telephone number in our cellphones and call to report when politely asking doesn’t work. I would love to see the on-leash-in-public-parks dog people of whom there are many, courteous, law-abiding, talk to the off-leash-in-non-authorized-park areas dog people about complying with posted signs and the laws regarding public parks.
Love dogs, HATE off-leash dogs on the sidewalk, getting in and out of cars at home and rushing at pedestrians, visiting dogs who left their leashes at home . . .
Who’s going to clamp down on dogs at Wallingford park? You? The city? If that’s the problem you care about, let’s make sure there’s a real solution at hand, before we give Gasworks away. If there isn’t going to be effective enforcement, you won’t be able buy them off.
I think I’m getting a horse. Now my little 30 foot yard isn’t really ideal for a horse, but that just makes it the community’s responsibility to put up with my horse, doesn’t it? If you think dogs are great, wait till you see my horse! Kids love them. (Especially girls for some reason …?) She doesn’t really bite, well OK she will chomp you once in a while but you won’t need to have your face sewn back on as you might if attacked by a dog. And the byproducts, well, they can be rather extravagant in quantity but not as noxious. Hopefully a trend, it would be great to get together with other horse owners!
The survey by DPR is asking for general feedback from citizens. It is the Wallyhood story headline that turned it into the “Off-Leash or Playfield” either/or black-and-white “debate.” That again. Sorry I bit.
Please leash dogs except at legal off-leash areas in Seattle. Please.
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I vote for keeping the Wallingford Playfield wading pool as a wading pool and not converting it to a spray feature. I also vote for preventing Seattle Public Schools from co-opting Wallingford Playfield as their recess/lunch/PE facility for Hamilton MIddle School.
Animal Control
(206) 386-PETS (7387)
9:10 am – 6:30 pm
(7 days a week)
https://www.seattle.gov/animalshelter/hours-location.htm
During Gawworks Park planning several years back an off leash area was actually considered in a portion of the new west section. As part of that effort I agreed to interview several dog owners who ran their dogs off leash at Wallingford Playfield. Their unanimous comment was that they would not go to Gasworks to run their dogs, it was just too far and the Playfield was too convenient. That the doggies clawed feet were destroying the grass was not their concern nor were the dogs’ leavings that ended up on Hamilton Middle School children during phys ed. That was someone else’s problem.
Thank you, Mike, as I believe the attitude of those dog owners is just as prevalent now as it was then (and there’s probably more of them, too). That’s why the notion of “They’ll run their dogs illegally until they get a new dog park, then they’ll stop” is simply unconvincing. Why should anyone believe that?
When I walk my friend’s dog (on a leash at ALL times) in Gasworks Park, I typically have to pick up after other peoples’ dogs, or fend off the ones that are running loose. If that’s my experience/perception, what does someone not favorable to dogs think?
Repairing community trust needs to come first, and calls for creative enforcement strategies from within the off-leash community itself….starting with acknowledgement that there’s a problem.
Lastly, when I wrote earlier about creating new dog parks, I meant acquisition of new space, space specifically created for off-leash areas. This has a far better chance of succeeding than trying to re-appropriate the multi-purpose areas of existing parks…especially those where the pattern of disregard for others (let alone the law) is already so evident.
I’m sure that if I interview dog owners who run their dogs off leash at Gazworks, they wouldn’t go to Wallingford playfield: proximity is part of the convenience here, not the playfield… And with [households with dogs outnumbering households with children], you’d still have dogs in the playfield even if Gazworks were to become an off-leash area. And it’s not dog owners attitude either that makes this unconvincing: plenty of them have a good attitude and a few bad apples are ruining it for all…
As much as I’d like new space too, that’s not so easy in this economy and with our density (where’s the new space to acquire?).
And don’t get me started on how the lawn gets destroyed at the playfield: finger pointing the dogs is misinformed and/or dishonest.
So we need to work together on this indeed (part of the “repairing community trust”). Shouldn’t be too hard here given it’s only a small problem IMHO.
well, one might consider the long promised Centerf or Wooden Boats space. Nothing has happened in that regard, so an off-leash area could be set over in that space. It is away from most activities and the cildren play area.
CWB is open. Check it out.
the north space? I just called their main number and was told it is just a storage space and nothing is going on there. I mean the NORTH Lake Union one just on west of Gasworks.
@Olivier: Maybe the South Lake Union partnership (City Light substation property, funding from Amazon and Vulcan) is one to emulate: what about a dog park within the new public space to be created at the North Transfer Station?
Good catch Neighbor2You! Hadn’t thought about the North Transfer Station :\
During the process in the 1990’s run by Jan Drago that created the current off-leash areas, dog owners pledged that if they could just have the OLA’s they requested, illegal activity in the neighborhood parks would cease. COLA (Citizens for Off Leash Areas) representatives promised to engage in self-policing the illegal activity and to run regular licensing campaigns to get some of the 60% of dogs that are currently not licensed to pay their fees. Many were skeptical at the time, which now appears to be justified.
Olivier – I served as community lead for projects at Wallingford Playfield since the early 1990’s and I can assure you that the number one source of wear and tear during the winter season at Wallingford Playfield is from the running of off-leash dogs. The claws easily shred the soft turf which is wet and dormant. The field is closed to all activity from November to April, but some dog owners assume the closure does not apply to them. It does!
The condition of the field is currently in the worst shape I can recall since moving here in the 1980’s. EVERYONE needs to respect the closure of the field, dogs included. The practice of turning over the “Field Closed” sign and pretending users do not know the field is closed (a practice that Hamilton has also employed, believe it or not) means that the turf never gets a chance to recover from the heavy use it receives during the rest of the year.
Please, everyone, do not use the field in the winter. The entire field is closed from November to April even though the entire field is not fenced off. Signs are usually posted, but Parks does not have the budget to fence every field in the city.
Thanks
The lawn sure needs protection from all elements during the winter time to recover from the beating it takes from our summer soccer games (not sure they had these in the 80s…).
I’ve noticed the lawn protective fences are quite solid and I haven’t seen anyone trespassing these last winter, so these seem to work.
Unfortunately, I think the dog vs park debate is just as heated as the car vs bike debate.