Final “Parks Master Plan” open house anticipated in October
Posted by Steven Hurdle on August 23, 2009
A staff report appearing Monday night (at 5 PM) before the Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Beautification Committee notes that the consultant, hired by the City of Langford to coordinate “the City’s parkland inventory,” has prepared a first draft. It goes on to add that Langford staff are “anticipating a public open house to be held at City Hall in mid to late October,” and that “This will be the final open house for public input, as we have hosted public open house workshops during the preparation of the Parks Master Plan draft document.”
The PRC&BC agenda has been added to Inside Langford’s “FILES” area on the left sidebar.
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Steven Hurdle said
The only other topic on the agenda reads to me like a technical amendment in relation to the opening and closing times of municipal parks. For interest:
“1.1 Municipal parks , including linear parks commonly referred to as trails, are closed between 9:00 p . m. and 7 :00 a.m. daily, unless otherwise specified in this bylaw or in operating agreements pertaining to the park.
1.2 Municipal parks listed on ‘Schedule A’ attached to and forming part of this bylaw, are hereby closed between 5:00 p.m. and 7: 00 a.m.”
The only park in “Schedule A” at this time is Danbrook Park.
Cheryl McLachlan said
I attended the committee meeting, and at the meeting, Jason Parks, Langford Parks Manager, brought forward a staff suggestion that did not made it into the staff report included in the agenda. The suggestion was instead of restricting parks usage from between 9AM-7PM that it should be no use from sunset to sunrise, so the times of usage would change with the seasons. The committee members reacted positively to this change. Councillor Wade pointed out it would hard for bylaw officers to remove people from the beach at the park on Leigh Rd. when they were still laying out in the sun. Another committee member commented on signs in other parks that say “dawn to dusk” for usage times. (Personally, I think “dawn to dusk” is more practical as dawn and dusk are defined ranges of time rather than sunrise and sunset which are very specific moments of time. As well there is often plenty of daylight after the actual time of sunset.)
Cheryl McLachlan said
There was also an explanation that park use would be set to a default time for all Langford parks (7AM-9PM/dawn to dusk) and only parks not adhering to those times would be listed. Hence Danbrook Park is listed in Schedule A so the City of Langford can limit usage of the park to 7AM-5PM. It was explained by some of the committee members and Senior Bylaw Enforcement Officer Lorne Fletcher that the reason for this was that in the past wooden play equipment was torched, needles were found, and drug activity had been a problem in Danbrook Park.
Cheryl McLachlan said
During the Parks & Rec Committee meeting Jason Parks, Parks Manager suggested that the final Open House on the Parks Master Plan would probably be at City Hall in Council Chambers, as the old City Hall was already all booked up, and would probably be held on or around October 22nd.