In application, county panel focuses on developing new parks,
upgrades
The Parks and Recreation Commission will focus on creating two
new parks and making improvements to other facilities in their
application for statewide park program grants.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors on May 24 approved a
resolution submitted by the commissioners with the list of projects
they want to propose as applications.
In application, county panel focuses on developing new parks, upgrades
The Parks and Recreation Commission will focus on creating two new parks and making improvements to other facilities in their application for statewide park program grants.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors on May 24 approved a resolution submitted by the commissioners with the list of projects they want to propose as applications.
The state grant program applications are due July 1, and it is a competitive process. The commissioners held public meetings and conducted surveys to get input from the community on what they most want to see at new and existing parks in San Benito County. Using that input, as well as a scoring matrix from the state, the commissioners came up with projects at four locations.
The grant requests can be for $100,000 to $5 million, and the state has $184 million to give out from Proposition 84 funding.
After looking through feedback from community workshops, focus groups and more than 400 surveys, the commissioners decided at their May 17 meeting which applications to recommend to the supervisors. They will focus on creating a river parkway, a regional park, improvements to Veterans Memorial Park and a joint project with the Tres Pinos School District to create sporting fields.
Part of the application requirement is that the projects must be completed in three years. The scoring matrix is complicated, and awards points based on a variety of criteria. The projects that will get funding are those with the highest scores.
“The first criteria is that the parks and projects serve underserved residents,” said Janelle Cox, a county management analyst. “The other is that the park serves a population that is low-income. The other criteria in the matrix could help identify different projects based on score points.”
Cox attached spreadsheets that ranked the amenities residents selected as the most important to them at the community workshops and through the surveys to assist the commissioners in selecting projects at the different park locations.
“There is a section of the application to talk about unique components of the county,” Cox said. “We can write to address things (there.)”
Commissioner Don Kelley, chairman of the commission, was concerned about putting similar features at different park locations because he didn’t want the county applications to be competing against each other. Cox pointed out that all the applications will be competing against each other, within the county and statewide, so that each application will be considered on its own merit and ranked.
Steve Wittry, the county’s public works director, reminded the commissioners that they should consider the ongoing maintenance aspects to projects they suggest.
High on the list of amenities proposed by residents was a swimming pool or water park.
“A pool is very difficult to operate,” Wittry said. “Even the spouting whale at Valley View Park is seasonal and limited. Consider anything that requires a lot of long-term maintenance.”
Commissioner Daniel Dungy talked about the possibility of creating partnerships with other agencies in the community, such as the YMCA, which could maintain a pool facility.
“We could do something on a long-term lease and get more bang for our buck,” Dungy said. “That vision is very dependent on partnerships with sports groups and school groups.”
Cox explained that any element included in the application would have to account for outside funding so they would not be able to submit projects based on future partnership possibilities for the current grant cycle.
“We can create the initial vision,” Kelley said. “It’s not for the county to go in and create a complex, but to create the opportunity for partnerships. …The opportunity to connect the diversity of the river parkway and regional park systems with schools is huge.”
The commissioners decided to focus on the top elements suggested by residents that would be feasible to complete within three years for three of the locations on which they received input from residents. One of the main suggestions was restroom facilities at new and existing parks. Jim West, a commissioner, suggested that those could easily be completed within the three-year time frame by using the same process used to put restrooms in at San Juan Bautista parks.
With grant money from Proposition 40, the county worked to build a foundation for the restrooms and then trucked in pre-fabricated units that were easily connected to the foundation.
“We can do it like we did the pre-fab in San Juan,” West said.
The commissioners spent much of their time discussing the regional park and river parkway, two parks that are still in the planning stages, though funding is available to purchase land. The ultimate goal is to connect the river parkway along the San Benito River, with trails from San Juan Bautista to Tres Pinos. The river parkway could also connect to a regional park.
“There are large quantities of the population that live so far out, they need a chance to have connectivity,” Kelley said.
In the end, the commissioners decided to submit grant applications to start the River Parkway and a regional park, to make improvements at Veterans Memorial Park, and to do a joint county and school district project in Tres Pinos School.
Below is a list of the projects to be completed at each location. Before the July 1 application due date, Cox and other staff members will work to estimate the cost of the suggested projects.
The Parks and Recreation Commissioners proposed the following projects at four locations in San Benito county:
River Parkway
Segment of the trail to be completed for walking, biking and equestrian uses
Restrooms
Picnic and sitting areas
Interpretive Signs
Multiple entrance points
Regional Park
Picnic and barbecue areas
Pond and nature study area
Large, open grass fields
Restrooms
Dog park
Amphitheater
Solar lighting
Veterans’ Memorial Park
Field realignment
Perimeter walk
Multipurpose room, community center or teen center
Integrate water conservation
Tres Pinos School Park – Joint county/school district project
Football field
Renovation of softball field
Perimeter walk
Future lighting infrastructure
