From: Molly Levitt
To: Mary Gourley; [email protected]; Neysa Hinton; [email protected]; Sarah Glade Gurney; Diana Rich Subject: Save Ives Park and Calder Creek - Public Comment Date: Monday, January 31, 2022 8:53:09 PM
Hello Council members,
I am a vegetation ecologist, mother of two young boys (1 and 4), and a resident of Willow Street. My family uses Ives Park several days a week, from walking through, to playing in playgrounds, meeting friends, picnicking, and frequently swimming at Ives Park. Due to our home location on Willow Street, we are very much impacted by many activities and events at Ives Park.
As an ecologist, my preference would be for the next phase of Ives Park to come with as much enhanced natural habitat and as close to a natural creek geomorphology as possible for a healthy flow and habitat (this means removing the baseball field). Though I love the ball field and having a field close by, it seems we have ample fields in our town that folks can use that are not situated in a place that prevents a creek from having a natural geomorphology. Let's use those other fields for playing ball and let the creek flow in a healthy ecologically-balanced manner that will protect from sediment runoff and will support biodiversity of aquatic and riparian wildlife.
Even though I love baseball and having a ball field close by has its good points (we can stroll by and see games played), as a resident of Willow Street, I won't mind if the field is gone, and it seems like a good tradeoff in this situation. Softball games in the spring and summer often go until 9 or 10 at night, and there is substantial light and noise pollution that come along with the games. In addition, we people of Sebastopol don't have access to the field, since it's always locked unless there's a scheduled game. If that area is restored to natural vegetation, I assume it will be much more useful to both the people of Sebastopol and local wildlife.
Does the city have a plan to keep camping out of our city park? There has already been a budding camping scene there at times in the last year or so. We have not felt unsafe as of yet, but we do hope the city will provide services for the growing homeless population so that our city parks don't become campgrounds. Will we have increased problems with camping with a more natural park, or is there a plan to stop that from happening? Having young kids, I am wondering if there will be a fence between the playground and the creek. I am often thankful that the bordering fence is stopping my kids from going in the creek. It would be good to know that if they are at the playground, they are not going to have free range to head toward the creek.
Please make sure there is a plan to keep the playgrounds and park as open as possible through this restoration project. We use it often, and hope to continue to do so for the duration of the project.
One more thing I'd like to mention is that I hope if Calder Creek is going to be accessible to the public, that there will be effort put into helping the landowners upstream from Ives park learn to steward the creek on their private properties. We don't want dirty livestock water for our kids to play in, for wildlife to utilize, and to flow to the Laguna. Let's come together as a community and support these landowners so that they an also protect our shared waters.
Perhaps getting the RCD's involved and helping with necessary funds are in order to assist these landowners in doing the right thing.
Kind regards and thanks for reading and considering my thoughts, Molly Levitt