Sunday morning in Beaver Lake Park, a gentle rain falling, silence, the smell of rain and earth. What a great place, a rare oasis in what is becoming an ever more developed, concrete, digital, scheduled, inorganic environment.

I was out there last weekend meeting with a couple of Beaver Lake residents, locals who live near the park and are worried with what they see as the city’s eagerness to push development there, as outlined in the Beaver Lake Master Plan.

The park is known and loved through the region. It is remarkable not for its abundance of public amenities, playground equipment or facilities, but entirely for a lack of these things. It is what draws fishermen and hikers, people wanting to lay down on a rug and read a book. For those wanting something different – a snack shed, frisbee golf, more slip and slides – then these parks are available too, somewhere else.

This is what I am hearing from some residents who love the park as it is, and it is definitely an idea that makes sense to me, too. Certainly, there is a need for better ecological restoration at the park, such as protecting the exposed roots of trees near the water’s edge. But for some, that is where the city’s impact on the park should about end.

The response of city staff to the question of why there needs to be a master plan at all has been answered in the past by “in order to provide a guideline for future development.” This is what is worrying to many – why will there be future development?

We saw in the public input process that there is a need for more sports fields. The ability of kids, and adults too, to have somewhere to play organized sports is a vital piece of public capital, an investment in the health and well-being of our children and families. But what isn’t as convincing is whether Beaver Lake Park is the place for that.

I genuinely don’t believe this a case of Beaver Lake NIMBY-ism (Not In My Back Yard) – an affliction from which the neighborhoods of the Eastside suffer more than most – but a case of residents wanting more intuitive, thoughtful, long term city planning. They are hoping desperately to avoid the same old bureaucratic processes that have already compromised and destroyed beautiful communities and neighborhoods all over America – progress for progress’ sake.

I have heard from some that the city’s Beaver Lake Master Plan process is merely about justifying the existence of itself. In order to secure future grants and funding, you need to have projects lined up. In order to have projects lined up, there needs to be a master plan. No plans, no projects, no staff.

As someone who is regularly exposed to the motivations and responsibilities of both residents and city staff, I don’t view the master plan process quite that cynically. The city staff are, on the whole, passionate and dedicated people working hard to keep Sammamish a nice place to live.

But the question does need to be asked – why are we making any plans for development of the park in the first place?

For mine, some of the justifications for why Beaver Lake Park needs improvement are pretty flimsy. One of the worst I have heard is that people having weddings or functions at the lodge don’t want other people’s kids running around in the background of their photos, so we need to build a berm separating the lodge from the public.

You don’t want other people around? Well, here’s an idea. Don’t get married in a public park. The communal nature of parks is one of their great attractions, and I really don’t believe the city should be coughing up bucks, or digging up ground, to please those few who demand privacy in the middle of what is a public resource.

Concrete paths so people don’t get muddy feet? It’s dirt. It gets muddy. You want to keep your loafers clean, then a dirt trail is probably not for you.

And the parking. By pandering to the demand for more parking space the city is encouraging a behavior it should be discouraging, instead of focusing on other ways to improve access to the park. I love to go down to Pike Place on the weekend for the potato knish they sell at the New York deli place. But parking downtown is miserable. So I catch the bus downtown. Or I catch it close enough and then I walk. Or I ride. Or I don’t go. I would much rather not be able to go now and then, than for the City of Seattle to wipe out a block of great old buildings to build a car park.

One of the promising concepts I heard city staff promote during the public meetings was that of essentially sacrificing those sites already ecologically compromised, such as the swimming area, in order to cluster activity and retain the areas elsewhere which are still ecologically “saveable.”

Walking around Beaver Lake, I had the thought that this is an idea we should be applying to the city as a whole – save the precious few places that still offer true glimpses of nature, and concentrate development in areas that are already urban, compromised, not environmentally significant. Beaver Lake Park would surely fall into the first category. And so the car parks, and flood lights, would have to go elsewhere.

Perhaps the current economic environment, and the city’s notable keenness to watch closely every penny it spends, will bring favor to the idea that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix what is clearly not broken doesn’t make much sense, financially, environmentally, or socially.