A step forward for parks master plan

There are still some tweaks to be made, but the city’s Parks, Recreation and Open Space Master Plan moved another step toward approval Tuesday night.

The San Marcos City Council held a second public hearing on the plan and approved the first reading. As with the first public hearing, some residents spoke out about concerns with the plan and with actions the parks department has taken in the past. Lisa Marie Coppoletta spoke about issues in Victory Gardens, such as the elimination of HEB Park and the trails that were put in.

“Would you want strangers trouncing through your back yard?” Coppoletta asked. “... They put a greenbelt right through their back yards, and I know we would not do this in a working class or Anglo neighborhood.”

Rodrigo Amaya also mentioned the elimination of HEB Park and safety issues in other parks.

Council member Saul Gonzales asked city staff what happened with HEB Park and if lighting might be provided on the trails in Victory Gardens to help eliminate illegal activity going on there.

The removal of HEB Park was “a transition that took place,” Bert Stratemann, parks operations manager said. “... The playground we had there was out of date. The decision was made when the trail improvements were being made. We just weren’t going to go back there with a playground at that time.”

Assistant City Manager Collette Jamison said that there had been concerns about the homeless in HEB Park and “bodily functions” going on in the park where children played.

“It did happen to coincide with what Mr. Stratemann said that the playground equipment was obsolete and it was not going to be replaced. There were no funds at that time.”

Council member Ed Mihalkanin questioned the elimination of a park that was put in for the neighborhood.

“There needs to be a procedure where the people in the community where that park is have a say in whether they want that park to be removed,” he said.

Council members also brought up concerns about bathroom availability in some of the neighborhood parks and adequate opportunities for art in the park — both concerns that residents had raised.

Elsewhere in the parks plan was a demographic breakdown of the city’s population that some council members took issue with. In particular, the white and Hispanic populations were combined under the category of “white” in a table that said San Marcos had an 83 percent white population. Council member Mark Rockeymoore asked about the numbers. Matt Bucchin from Halff Associates, who worked on the plan with the city, said the chart was a restatement of census data.

“It’s not lumping them together,” Bucchin said. “White is white, and Hispanic could be from any race. … Hispanic is an ethnicity, it’s not a race.”

“There’s only one race — the human race,” Rockeymoore said. “Everything else is an ethnicity. By stating this, you’ve actually made a political decision. … That’s a statement that the city of San Marcos wants to stand by?”

“I don’t agree with this, either,” Mayor Pro Tem Lisa Prewitt said.

City Manager Bert Lumbreras supported the idea of changing it.

“I don’t believe it’s a political issue or a political statement,” he said, but he did favor using ethnicity. “It’s just an issue of how we want it, because it’s our report. I would say ethnicity is the best way to report it, and let’s just change it.”

The first reading passed unanimously with the understanding that changes would be made before the second reading.