Opinion: Wrong solution for off-leash park Opinion: Wrong solution for off-leash park (November 03, 2004)

By Elizabeth Houck

What was the Menlo Park Parks and Recreation Commission thinking when they decided to vote down all of the proposals of both the off-leash dog park committee and the Parks and Recreation staff?

Not that either of the proposals made by the committee or staff were acceptable. One would cost about $800,000 and the other would overrun our parks and playgrounds with mostly unfenced off leash dogs. But what the commission did put forth is, in a word, dumb, at least in my opinion.

How smart is it to approve off-leash space where the city just spent a half a million dollars to resurface a baseball diamond where there will be both baseball games and soccer practice, only to allow off-leash dogs, which will tear up the expensive turf more so than either sport?

Not to mention that the location is in the park that has the most usage per square foot and is surrounded by the most residences in the entire city. And there are other issues:

Would you want your kids sliding into dog poop when they play? And, the ball teams pay a huge amount of money to the city to use that diamond for these activities, but the dog owners think it's their right to use the field free. No dog bark in Nealon Park.

How smart is it to approve an unfenced off-leash space directly next to a tot playground? The commission did just that in Willow Oaks Park. Unfenced, dawn to dusk on all the open grass in the center of the park, leaving only the "sofa's sculpture" grass area for those who don't want to picnic with off leash dogs coming over to beg scooby-snack and to have a poop. Not to mention that the only way into the tot lot will now be through off leash dogs.

I have urged the city to assess needs, not just the wants of DOGMA, the pro off-leash dog group. The best result would clearly define a solution that mitigates issues in it's design; find or make specific dog-only areas away from children and seniors; implement a solution with an enforceable rules plan (which is necessary for liability issues) and provide swift consequences for those 5 percent of dog owners who make the rest of us look bad.

People pay to use our parks for soccer and baseball, and they should have to pay for the off-leash space; in fact let's make it self-funding. In this time of budget cuts and lay-offs does the city really need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on this?

Elizabeth Houck lives on Middle Avenue in Menlo Park.
Elizabeth Houck internetmailme@yahoo.com

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