Good morning to all,

This morning I sent a response to Marc Richardson the director of Parks and Rec for a message he directed to another City employee named Richard Hovden.

In his message to Mr. Hovden, Mr. Richardson asked Richard to respond to us and that he hoped we as a community would become active in developing the master plan.

The following is Mr. Richardsons message and my reply...

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Richardson, Marc wrote:
Hi Rich-
Would you please respond to Mr. Easter’s question by outlining the resources available to develop Harvest Park in the proposed 2009-2010 Capital Improvement Program along with the timing for master plan development and construction drawings? I’m hoping the neighbors will become active participants in developing the park master plan this next fiscal year. Perhaps it would be helpful to let Mr. Easter and other neighbors to know that the City had to purchase the 4+ acres of future park property from Christopherson Homes and that the source of funding for the property purchase utilized most of the park development fees received from Harvest Subdivision.
Thank you,

Tuesday May 17
Good morning Mr. Richardson,

Thank you for the prompt response to Mr. Hovden and for the information we were able to receive from your message to him.

It should please you to know that your hope will definitely be realized as 'We' the Harvest community have always been more than eager to be a part of the Master Plan development and implementation we were promised many years ago.

FYI, there are many ongoing health concerns which include a rat population that breeds out of control when the weeds get too high as well as allergies that are aggravated with the massive amount of weeds on the parcel. Not to mention this Park has become a convenient dumping ground for many forms of waste including sofas, refrigerators, bar-b-que grills and common litter. All of which were kindly removed from the property by the Santa Rosa Fire Department because they were the only organization that seemed interested in helping.

Other on-going concerns are migration of the weed population onto neighboring properties and the dangerous use of this parcel as a 'Four wheel drive test track" which can clearly be seen from the GIS color photo on the City's Map Site.

Like myself, many in this community have children that could benefit from this park. My son was 1 year old when we moved in, he is 9 today and has never known that parcel to be anything other than a dirt lot filled with weeds, trash and tire tracks. All of these children should have had the availability of this park for recreation in order to develop and maintain an active lifestyle. Currently we as a community have to travel outside our area in order to do so. Obviously this is an extreme inconvenience to us but also a waste of energy creating more green house gasses from the unnecessary trips to other parks.

Marc and Richard, if this seems to be coming out of no-where let me assure you, it is not. We as a community have been very active in wanting resolution to this issue, very active in wanting to participate in that resolution and frankly, now we are at the point of becoming very active in making our concerns known. Simply, we believe in creating community through people, parks and programs. We the people of this Community want to see a program initiated to create our Park.

We as a community appreciate your help in this endeavor.

Sincerely,

The Harvest Community.