Dear City Council Members,  

I live near the Seminary Oaks Park. I've met with a number of you individually to discuss the reservoir project over the past month or so. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you very much for the interactions I've had with you throughout this process.  

A number of you have taken hours out of your extremely busy schedule to meet with me. These meetings have been at 7am on a weekday. Or 7pm on a Sunday. Or other times that are tough for all of us. And you have listened carefully to my concerns. I really appreciate that a great deal.  

And you've given me the chance to express my main concern that I feel that the process which led to focusing on Seminary Oaks Park has somehow gotten derailed along its nearly 10 year history. I believe that selection criteria were missing key points, which limited some creative win-win solutions.

• For example, by making it a firm requirement that construction occur on city owned land, we lost the opportunity to explore Flood Park, the VA Hospital, the Seminary, and other locations
• I feel that a construction project of this size should definitely be coordinated with other town construction projects (such as the renovation of the Burgess recreation fields) to minimize the impact on the community from multiple major construction projects
• By focusing on construction costs only, we neglected other costs which could make the project even more expensive (higher long term operating costs due to a reservoir that was undersized, perpetual property tax losses from impacted homes adjacent to the degraded park, etc.)
• I believe that a project like this is a natural partner with existing or new soccer playing fields, which many other communities do. A soccer field can be built right on top of the underground reservoir and sites involving this type of usage should clearly receive priority I think.
• I feel that a creative combination of wells and a different sized reservoir might give us the protection we need at a much lower cost to the community.
• And I feel that a project like this should focus on doing no permanent damage to a park. At Seminary Oaks Park the plan called for the permanent removal of all the trees - over 100 of them - except for one (and you can't plant trees on top of the new reservoir), and for raising the park up 5' higher from where it is now, leaving some sort of cliff or ramp around the edges of the park.

I am extremely grateful that the city has listened to my concerns, has stopped focusing on Seminary Oaks Park as the "preferred location", and is now revisiting the criteria used in this important project with the goal of reaching the right decision through a broad, creative, community-based approach.  

I am extremely happy to be part of a community whose government listens so thoughtfully to its citizens and is so supportive of them!  

Sincerely,

Mike Cassidy

Seminary Dr.     Received on Mon Jun 30 17:01:02 2008