Locals Bark at Dog Park

The Parks and Recreation Commission (PRC) and the staff have been hard at work this year trying to come up with a solution to providing an off leash area for the 10,000 families that own dogs in our City. Slowly but surely the idea evolved of building a dog park within one of the existing parks, and when the existing parks were surveyed, the PRC’s #1 choice was Darrin Park. Among other considerations, Darrin Park was being used by the local residents as an informal off leash area, and several trips by several Commissioners confirmed this. The staff and Commissioners reasoned – “If the locals were already using this area as an informal dog park, think how happy they’d be to have this formalized with the addition of fencing, water, and other facilities.” It was a reasonable thought, but, it turns out, inaccurate. 

More than a dozen locals, mostly from Cedar Glen, appeared at the PRC Thursday night to voice their objection to a dog park in Darrin. Their objections included the noise, the danger of dog bites, and the unsanitary conditions they believed would result from owners not cleaning up after their dogs. None of these objections had much merit, as the noise from dog parks turns out to be minimal, dog bites in dog parks are almost unheard of, and most dog parks are reasonably well maintained by the dog owners who have a vested interest in keeping the area clean. 

But one of their objections was spot on – the parking problem. It seems that there are only 20+ parking spots for Darrin Park, and if Darrin were to be the City’s dog park, residents of Cedar Glen worried that overflow from the parking of the dog owners would invade their property, especially before and after work. In addition, some residents worried that having a dog park would lower their property values, although there is no evidence of this.

Regardless of the merits of their objections, it was clear that the locals did not want Darrin Park to become the City’s dog park. A dozen people are a lot of people for a PRC meeting, so the Commissioners were impressed.

On the other side of the issue, only one person spoke who supported the dog park. Several locals also supported the park, but not in their neighborhood.

Readers of my blog know that Darrin wasn’t my first choice, and I advocated for Borrego Park. Borrego is the best choice, IMHO, because (1) it isn’t near residential homes, (2) it has parking and even the ability for overflow parking (into the library space which is almost always empty), and (3) the distance between the parking area and the proposed dog area is short. Despite the obvious appeal of Borrego it got low marks from some of the Commissioners, and perhaps now that Darrin has encountered opposition from the locals, the PRC will rethink Borrego.

Borrego is also a good choice because the City has approved nearly 4,500 new homes to be built within a mile or so of Borrego, so the population center of the City is about to take a huge move Eastward.

But I think there is a larger issue here and one that slipped past all of us. The idea of an off leash area went from a central dog park to dog zones in existing parks to a central dog park in an existing park. See the problem? If Darrin Park is to become the City’s only dog area, then the residents are correct in worrying about being overwhelmed. If the PRC wants to have a single dog park, we need to come up with an area of sufficient size and space to accommodate the city’s needs, which with nearly 10,000 families with dogs, are not small. On this basis, the Whispering Hills area seems ideal as an area for a city-wide dog park. If the City wants to create dog zones in existing dog parks, it needs to set up several parks (I’d like to see three) so that none of the existing parks are overwhelmed with the burden of providing an area for the entire City.

There is another alternative. So far the City has only considered City-owned property. There are several properties that are owned by the County (El Toro Park, the areas along El Toro between Trabuco and Portola) and Cal Trans (the area along the freeway from Ridge Rte. to El Toro) that would be good areas for either zones or a park. If the prospects for (a) Whispering Hills as a city-wide dog park or (b) the creation of 3 dog zones in existing parks are not viable, the PRC can consider moving outside city-owned property in the search for an off leash facility.

Which brings us to the topic of Whispering Hills – our topic for tomorrow.