Carson City residents meet with mayor to discuss dog park controversy at Ronald D. Wilson Park

Roughly 30 Carson City residents met at Ronald D. Wilson Memorial Park at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24 to counter the building of the dog park in this neighborhood.

The gathering lasted for roughly an hour and many concerns about the dog park and the area were voiced.

People said they felt “blindsided” by the city and they were concerned about potential traffic increases in an area already without sidewalks, the city putting a priority of dogs over people, where the potential location placement of the park was going to be, the horse problem in the area continuing and other issues regarding the unfixed playground.

Lori Bagwell, the mayor of Carson City and Lisa Schuette, supervisor of ward four came to the gathering to hear the concerns of all residents over this dog park issue.

Marlene Reite called the mayor and other residents because of their frustration over this new development. She explained that they could be putting dog parks elsewhere at bigger parks, or fixing up the dog area at Fuji Park.

One resident, Jackie explained there were “buckets of concern” associated with this new development.

“There is a feeling that the residents in this particular space were blindsided by our city,” Jackie said.

Another big concern the residents voiced is the area’s lack of sidewalks and the potential build-up of traffic to come with this park.

Jean Green, one resident of Carson City said because this is a senior park area, many residents couldn’t “move in a hurry” if they have to, which makes the potential increase of traffic less safe in the area.

Many residents also explained they had concerns over the lack of stop signs in the neighborhood. There are currently only yield signs around the park.

“Again, please do a traffic study,” Jackie said. “Put those stop signs back because people come in too fast.”

Another big concern amongst the residents was the park taking away the emphasis of people priority at parks, shifting the focus on dog areas instead.

One resident said that many people nearby that don’t have cars or a lot of transportation resources walk to the park and spend the afternoon here because they don’t have any other place to go. They believe condensing the extra open grass area for a dog park will take away a playing area for kids.

“The concern is the grassy area is intended to be enclosed for dogs and it negates the use of kids playing,” one woman said.

Bagwell reiterated that this was a plan happening all over the city. She said they are implementing enclosed dog parks for off-lease activity at many other parks including Fuji Park, Long Ranch Park, Sonoma Park and potentially Mills Park in the future — though this has no set plan yet.

“Every neighborhood needed somewhere for their dogs to go,” Bagwell said.

The idea of this project is to allow all neighborhoods to have a dog park so they can stay within their community and not increase traffic in other places. Supervisor Schuette said with more dog parks spread out, there won’t be overwhelming numbers at just one location.

“Dog parks don’t equate to huge numbers,” Schuette said. “There’s some folks who may want to use this park but we don’t expect big numbers.”

Reite also relayed the concern over more dogs entering the neighborhood.

“We’ve already had one dog killed in this park,” Reite told the mayor. “We want to eliminate any possibility of this happening again.”

Bagwell said she understands the concerns and vowed to propose a new draft to be presented to residents that considers all concerns, but she reminds the residents that it’s hard to make everyone happy.

“You’re not the only users and neighbors of this park,” Bagwell said. “No one is happy about anything.”

She explained that many residents came to the Board of Supervisors meeting and sent in comment to the Ronald D. Wilson Park survey where they discussed this dog park development and many commented and called asking for more dog areas to be implemented.

The decision of a dog park is also stirring up raw feelings about the unfixed park that’s been fenced off for roughly two years at the Ronald Memorial Park.

“There is emotion around the two year untouched slide,” Jackie explained.

Bagwell explained that she wanted to be transparent and that parks were roughly $800,000 to rebuild and do maintenance on, so the city is only able to work on one per year. She doesn’t know when this one will be next up on the list for fixing.

Overall, residents really want to keep this park for “the people” as it was originally proposed, and not just dedicated to dogs.

“We’ll make it as good as we can,” the mayor said, explaining that she is listening to all of their concerns.

Bagwell then told the community that she would consider putting the dog park on the west side of the park, rather than taking up the bigger east side where kids play. However, she noted that she wants to respect the wishes of the people living in the homes along that side of the park as well, near Shady Tree Lane.

In this process, they also plan to fence the park so the horses will be kept out and not leave feces all over the park.

Jackie again summarized the overall want of “leaving the park alone” and asked they just fence out the horses and not build the extra park.

The mayor said they would discuss forming a plan and presenting a third draft to look at and bring it back to the residents for consideration, but that the plan was already in progress to build a dog park here.

Bagwell and Schuette explained it was hard to make everyone happy but they always shoot to satisfy as many as possible.

“We really do care about this community as citizens,” Jackie said in return. “We are just worried.”

The mayor and supervisor Schuette told the residents they would look at all their concerns and consider their options and re-present draft three as soon as possible for this park.