Sue Lani Madsen: Neighborhood communication unleashed on dog park

If the Spokane Park Board moves on from the Upriver Drive dog park site, it won’t be because of eight unhappy property owners next door. It won’t be the over 250 signatures it collected on petitions. It will be the uncomfortable questions brought into the open after the breakdown of an award-winning planning process.

Jonathan Bingle, representing the Spokane City Council on the Park Board, said he was surprised at how a dog park was public priority during master planning, but then three of four sites were roundly rejected by their neighborhood councils. And for the Upriver Drive site, he admitted the communication was mishandled.

“We have to acknowledge we didn’t get the outreach right and work hard to rebuild trust,” Bingle said.

Everybody says it was an award-winning process. It says so on the city website. Bingle mentioned it. So did Garrett Jones, director of Spokane Parks and Recreation. The park master planning outreach was recognized for “how we reached out to citizens; we went to them rather than them coming to us,” Jones said. He pointed to workshops, surveys and presentations to neighborhood councils.

Except the neighborhood councils don’t extend outside the city and most of the neighbors along the park boundary live in the county. Ignoring them may have been procedurally rational, but it’s not very neighborly.

While the Upriver Drive site is in the Chief Garry Park Neighborhood, the Parks Department reached out to the adjacent Minnehaha Neighborhood Council. The idea for new development was received enthusiastically in a northeast Spokane neighborhood that often feels neglected. They have also felt the sting of being blindsided by city-driven projects, according to Chair Shannon Benn.

“We were very, very specific in our questioning,” Benn said. “We asked if the people living in the gray house and the people beyond had been talked to. Had we been told the truth, we would have withheld our letter of support.

“Now we’re the bad neighbors because we said OK.”

Jim and Shari Carlson live in that gray house. To the east is the Shields Park parking lot, to the west a natural area with lots of wildlife. Less than two weeks before the May 11 vote, they learned from a TV news reporter about the city’s plans for their little slice of heaven.

They contacted their county-dwelling neighbors and started making noise. Detailed emails were sent to city councilors, county commissioners and media. Jones sat down with some of the group; they left that meeting with the impression it had been their responsibility to check for notices. They turned up at the Park Board meeting May 11 to object. And the board voted as planned on the resolution to move forward with design, amended by Bingle in an attempt at reassurance that their concerns would be considered and mitigated.

The neighbors were not reassured when they gathered at the park the following Saturday morning. It’s a beautiful urban conservation area. Understandably, the neighbors aren’t thrilled at the prospect of living next to 6-foot cyclone fences instead of watching deer bedding down their fawns in a meadow. City water and sewer are not available. They’re concerned about their wells and the impact of concentrated dog feces and urine on the aquifer. They are not reassured the city’s plans will address the homeless encampments and parking lot drug deals their neighborhood is already dealing with.

Airplanes taking off from Felts Field, just across the river, repeatedly interrupted the conversation. FAA concerns were reported as a factor in the closure of Spokane County’s Orchard Avenue Park last year, also in the Felts Field airport overlay zone. So why can this park expand to attract more people? Then the practice sessions started at the firing range, adding intermittent faux fireworks to the smorgasbord of sound. The wildlife and their dogs have acclimated, dog park visitors may not.

But the uncomfortable questions go beyond disrupted privacy, public safety and environmental impacts. It’s the money and whose money. According to the memorandum of understanding between the school district and the city, Jones said Spokane Public Schools committed to “whatever would adequately design and build a dog park that met our guidelines from a regional standpoint.” He said there wasn’t a number. The site was adopted as a zero-cost project to the park board.

Utilities are a key siting consideration, because, according to the city’s guidelines, “it would be challenging and costly to add all-new utilities to a region that does not provide it currently,” like the Upriver Drive site.

So if there is no cap on the cost, then the neighbors can be reassured the proposed regional park will meet the guidelines and incorporate mitigation measures they’ve been promised will be discussed during design.

Except that’s not what Spokane Public Schools says.

Greg Forsyth, capital projects director for Spokane Public Schools, said the conceptual design doesn’t include restrooms or extending water to the site, which he described as cost prohibitive.

“We’re going to build a very nice natural dog park area with fencing, parking and an ADA trail,” Forsyth said.

So which will it be? A regional park meeting the publicly developed guidelines and addressing neighborhood concerns, or the limited services conceptual approach as negotiated by the bureaucracies?

Somewhere there has been a failure to communicate.

Contact Sue Lani Madsen at rulingpen@gmail.com.