On June 3 at 6:30 p.m. at Beaver Lake Park Lodge, the City of Sammamish is presenting “options” for “improving” the park.

Based on the “planning meeting” I attended on April 15, I believe most of the “improvement” will involve the City’s agenda to reconfigure, re-turf and extensively light the existing baseball fields, thereby transforming a sleepy little neighborhood park into a busy, multi-sport, continuously used year rounds sports complex.

$125,000 has already been spent on consultants and $1,750,000 more has been allocated.

That’s close to $2 million dollars. And that’s just for Phase I.

And while the city will be quick to roll out various physical configurations of fields and lighting schemes, I suspect what we won’t see is any accompanying management use plan.

By this I mean a proposed use schedule and associated long term recurring costs of maintenance.

Lights are both intrusive and expensive, and noise and traffic affects us all. And while the city gets a lot of things right, unfortunately the Parks Department already has a pretty poor track record regarding managing the park. In one case a nearby land owner had to build a gate and deny one whole side of the neighborhood park access due to security and misuse issues, and then there’s the dog park.

Go down there any sunny weekend and you won’t have to wait five minutes to see a dog off leash outside the designated area and their corresponding business scattered throughout the park.

Ask yourself if we need another Marymoor Park slap dab in the middle of our neighborhood.

Or if we can allow the city to capriciously decide when and how these new fields can or should be used with no accountability to the surrounding community.

If you think this is a good idea, stay home the night of June 3 and watch TV.

Or better yet, go outside and enjoy the peaceful quite of the evening — while you still can.

Ed Steenman

Sammamish