Rejecting the recommendation of a task force, Kansas City parks officials left Sunnyside Park in Waldo off of a list of possible sites for new dog parks.
Kansas City Parks and Recreation staff came up with the list and presented it to the board on Tuesday. Thirteen possible locations throughout the city's six council districts were identified.
The staff report infuriated Deb Hipp and the members of Well-Organized Off-Leash Friends (WOOF). Hipp has promoted Sunnyside Park as a sensible place to allow dogs to scamper and sniff since 2006. WOOF raised money and even hired an architect to develop a site plan. "You're doing everything you can to stand in our way," Hipp, a former Pitch writer, complained at Tuesday's meeting.
A Dog Park Task Force, appointed in 2007, shared WOOF's enthusiasm for Sunnyside, determining the park to be the ideal location among the parks south of 31st Street.
Parks officials omitted from Sunnyside from its list of favorable locations primarily because it could not accommodate a dog park fives acres in size. (The WOOF plan calls for a 3.45-acre dog area in Sunnyside.)
Tuesday's board meeting resembled a meeting that took place two years ago. Then, Hipp and and other WOOF supporters were outraged when a dog-park policy, which effectively removed Sunnyside from consideration, found its way onto the agenda at the 11th hour.
The parks commissioners approved the new policy amid howls but later suspended their decision and announced the creation of a task force to study the matter.
Mel Solomon chaired the Dog Park Task Force. On Tuesday, he said he could not support the staff's recommendations. He encouraged the parks board to make a better effort to reconcile the differences between the staff report and the one completed by the task force.
Hipp used her time to lash out at parks Commissioner Aggie Stackhaus, WOOF's principal adversary on the parks board. Stackhaus is friends with Waldo neighborhood leader Eula Inloes, who does not want a portion of Sunnyside set aside for pets and their owners. Stackhaus showed her hostility to the idea of a Sunnyside dog park by rolling her eyes and puffing out her cheeks when WOOF members addressed the board.
Hipp called out Stackhaus for being overly demonstrative. "You're completely disrespectful," Hipp said.
Stackhaus admitted that she opposed dog parks in concept; she said her focus was on children. Challenged by another WOOF supporter, Stackhaus suggested that she was above criticism by virtue of her long record of public service. "I spend 50 hours a week on community work," she said.
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The reason that some days there may be more dogs at Sunny Side than people? The dogs are off leash and some are vicious. I have been attacked while walking as has my dog. She weighs about 60 pounds but was still attacked by another dog, who was off leash. The dog bit off her ear and bit her face, which required stitches and left me with a hefty vet bill.
To Chris Bouchard: I wanted to let you know you are not alone in your opinions.
Parks & Recreation has been managing parks longer than Deb Hipp has been alive. They know what they are doing and I applaud them for making a well educated decision. As to "Sick & Tired" comments - when you leave, please take your dog and his poop with you. I have been walking in Sunny Side and been attacked by a dog who was off leash. If you want to exercise your dog and have a visit with friends, fence in your yard and invite them over. I don't want to be having a cook out and have the odor of dog urine and poop wafting over my supper. You say you will pick up after your dogs - how does one pick up dog urine?
I believe in the concept of dogparks (well thought out and objectively planned out with the whole community in mind) and am a multi dog owner. I have worked for the Parks Department (and they are the Pros at what they do), I am a nearby resident of both Sunnyside and South Oak parks. All that to say, I with all sincerity, say that each and every Board member as well as those on the Parks Department's Planning and Executive staffs deserve a hearty congratulations for making what might be condsidered by some a controversial decision. It was the right choice!
Again, what happen to reporting all sides of a story why the focus on the 'poor me' types like Deb Hipp and her 'spoiled kid' mentality. What happen to the main crux of the story (i.e., the City moving towards developing new dogparks throughout its borders and why the story's emphasis on criticizing those public servants that are making it happen) or what about the other side to the 'Sunnyside Saga', namely the significant effort made by a group of dog owners opposed to a misguided plan to place a dogpark right in the middle of a small neighborhood park already overweight with activity areas? What about the story about an inherently biased Dogpark Task Force whose site recommendations were already made prior to the group's inception? What, no mention of the public call made by a certain someone inciting citizens to harass these public servants (who I might remind people are not paid positions) at their workplaces, at their homes? This story is about what exactly? How about Money!!!
Who cares? We do. Why did you bother to come post a comment if you don't care? If you don't care, go watch TV or something. Some of us would like to be able to use our public parks.
Bias Expected,
If people don't want to look at dog parks, ball fields, swimming pools or spray grounds then perhaps they shouldn't purchase (or more likely, rent, in the case of most Sunnyside opponents) homes directly across from a public park.
I wouldn't want to look at or listen to the screeching coming from a ball field every day, so I bought a house that is not across the street from a park.
Private citizens do not have the right to commandeer public land and make sure it stays empty so that they can feel like they live on their own private estate. Want your own estate? Then buy one.
Dog parks are no different from any other amenity except that they're more used and (IMO) more fun. Dog parks are the only amenity that draw people to the park day in and day out year round in all weather. Our leaders' stated goals included increasing the abysmally low park usage in this city, but I guess that was a lie.
Reply to bias expected: Just an FYI, I never worked with David or any of the current staff writers at the Pitch. I don't know him outside from seeing him at the parks board meetings. I know there's no way you could know that, just letting you know. As a former Pitch writer, I can tell you for sure that if they thought I was doing anything foolish or wrong, they would write about it.
I agree with the decision. The problem with WOOF is their blinders are on. I know what's like to be excited about something and totally convince yourself that it will only work at "Sunny Side" or whatever, but you are wrong. You just want it where you think the best place is. You people don't even consider the maintenance or any other issues regarding the public. Very biased, but it was expected. Anywho WOOF you are wrong and put yourself in other peoples shoes, like the people who will have to look at that park everyday. Typical KC if you ask me. Between the mayor and these clowns the city really is doomed.
I've been to every public hearing, open forum, town hall meeting and park board meeting on dog parks. I was really hoping the park commissioners would redeem themselves from all their past bad behavior.
I have now experienced the "straw that broke the camels back" by watching them once again pass an ordinance that ignores the public input and even the dog park task force's recommendations. They have set us up for the last time. I no longer care about Kansas City, my home for the last 62 years. I see the corruption that goes on at this low level (parks and rec) and can only imagine what the public doesn't know about politics at a higher level.
Kansas City now has a new moniker "THE CITY THAT DOESN'T CARE". I'm taking my tax dollars on my multiple properties and moving to some place where I count. I'm sick of paying for other people's children to attend our bad schools, parks that cannot be used by all and an $8,000 oriental rug for an inept mayor's office.
Color me "outa here"
Idiocy and arrogance is right. Who do these people think they are? I guess they are determined to keep Kansas City a "podunk town" as our mayor's wife so eloquently calls it.
I agree with Paul that probably none of the parks board members has even been in a dog park and have absolutely no business making rules about them without consulting the community who actually uses it, experts who actually know about dog parks and the non-profit that helps run our one dog park.
I also love how Aggie Stackhaus says she is opposed to dog parks on principle and that her focus is on children. I guess that's why we have a $200,000 spray ground that sits empty for nine months of the year and is used so sparsely during the supposed busy season that there are often no children there and the lifeguard just goes to sleep (yes, has actually been documented sleeping with an empty McDonald's bag next to him.) I guess that's why we have new playgrounds being built left and right - multiple ones in each park because gawd forbid a parent should have to walk 10 yards to a different playground.
How dare Stackhaus tell me and other taxpayers that all of our tax money has to go to fund Kansas City's 10 millionth playground so that Aggie Stackhaus can gush about how much she looooves children.
Meanwhile, the parks board gives the finger to taxpaying citizens who do not have children or who have other interests - you know, those of us who are funding the schools and keeping this city afloat until we decide to pack up and move to a city that actually tries to ATTRACT taxpaying citizens and doesn't tell non-parents or people who have other interests besides bringing their kids to the playground that they can f off.
Thanks David, but what isn't mentioned is that the Board also changed the rules for Penn Valley, excluding anyone with more than two dogs (which include me, the President of DIG, the non-profit supporting the park) or children under 8. Neither are issues IN ANY WAY. Both were specifically addressed in the report as rule changes we (the task force) considered but saw as needlessly punishing responsible users. I have no idea how the Board, of which probably not one has ever even BEEN in a dog park, knows better than a task force that spent years studying the issue. Complete idiocy and arrogance.
Dear Mr. David Martin. You're the best reporter at The Pitch but on this one you might have just let Deb Hipp write your post.
I know you're all required to make CJ and her homies happy but this is just a tad biased in the favor of a former Pitch Staffer.
I guess we all have our conflicts. At the very least you did give a nod to some of the facts regarding the impractically and bad planning of Sunnyside Dog Park Advocates.
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