More Rosemont Activities on CRPD Board Member's Wish List

Some Rosemont residents have said they feel left out of the Cordova Recreation and Park District's long-term plan, but a district board member said they haven't forgotten about the neighborhood.

Wednesday night’s Cordova Recreation and Park District board meeting mentioned little of the Strategic Master Plan, which has not yet been adopted.

An appendix to the plan lists recommendations for Rosemont parks, including , , , , and parks. The recommendations mainly consist of maintenance, graffiti removal and minor updates to the parks.

Although recommendations for parks in Rosemont are included in an appendix listing all of the district's facilities, residents still want to see activities offered to Rosemont residents through the district.

board member Joan Armstrong-Allen brought the issue to the board Wednesday night. She said she feels that the board does not know what to do about the issue.

“The board indicated that Mather and Goethe have activities that people in Rosemont are welcome to use,” Armstrong-Allen said. “But [Rosemont] people don’t use them.”

CRPD board member Rick Sloan said they would like to see more activities offered, but that they generally have to have facilities to house the activities. Sloan said he has been a Rosemont resident for 25 years and that he does want to bring more activities to the area.

“We don’t have a community center or building that people can be inside or do art classes,” Sloan said. “It’s hard to bring those programs to those areas–that’s why people have to go to the facilities that offer that.”

Sloan said he would love to bring instructors to the parks, but they haven’t been able to implement that yet. He also mentioned that they are currently because of the budget.

“We are making efforts to get more out into the parks, especially in joint with the ,” he said. “We’re making efforts, and I thought that we’ve been doing a lot more than we have in the past.”

Armstrong-Allen feels that more activities are needed in Rosemont, pointing out that most activities are at the senior center. She said more activities are needed for the youth in the area.

“Rosemont is sort of my turf and I’m always keeping my head up for them,” Sloan said.

The CRPD currently has an afterschool activities program, with plans to extend it out to Rosemont. Sloan said it is a joint effort between the CRPD and schools, where a CRPD employee actually comes to the schools to work on the activities with the students.

“We may need to make some intelligent suggestions on what we want to see done,” she said.

The board will continue to accept comments on the issue until Feb. 28.

This was the last meeting for interim district administrator Doug Critchfield, senior landscape architect. James Rodems will officially step in as the CRPD’s new district administrator on Feb. 16, in time for the next meeting.

“I just, this is my last meeting, and I just wanted to take a couple of minutes and just talk a little about what has happened over the last 12 months,” Critchfield said. “I think I owe it to the board to give an accounting of the time I was in this position.”

Critchfield mentioned some of the accomplishments he felt the CRPD was able to make over the last 12 months, including the White Rock and Hagen Entry Project, the Mather second soccer field, increased accountability for the financial processes and the Strategic Master Plan.

“On the human resources side, we’ve had a challenging layoff, but we feel that we’ve right-sized the district to where our funds are apparently,” Critchfield said. “And all of these things have taken on a tremendous effort on our staff.”

He finished his speech by thanking the board and management team.

“It’s been a pleasure working with you, and I admit, I have a lot of faults,” Critchfield said. “It’s been a learning process for me, but I want to thank you all for supporting me during this time.”

This is the first CRPD meeting since CRPD park superintendent Steve Ebert was shot and killed in his car outside of the district offices on Jan. 23.

A security guard stood in front of the district offices during the meeting, but said that he always patrols the area and that he was not added security because of the shooting.

“It’s been a tough couple of weeks, and I just want to acknowledge the work the staff’s been doing in getting ready for tomorrow’s memorial service,” Sloan said at Wednesday’s meeting. “It’s been pretty tough.”