My kids have been going to the new park for the past two weeks,
even though it isn’t officially open yet.
My kids have been going to the new park for the past two weeks, even though it isn’t officially open yet. They have been going to Sunrise Park, which is closest to our house. I haven’t told them about Carriage Hills Park yet, which is also close by and almost open, and I am sure they will want to try the rock climbing wall.
When I moved to Gilroy in 1994, I lived in the Carriage Hills subdivision. I had three children under the age of five, and there was no park near us. My first year in Gilroy, I would walk to Miller Park or Las Animas Park twice a week with the kids, me being a displaced non-driving New Yorker. I asked then why there were no parks in my neighborhood. There were plenty of kids in the neighborhood, just no parks. And I remember being told, at a Parks and Rec meeting 10 years ago, that the parks were coming soon. I guess “soon” is a relative term seeing as my oldest child could now drive to the park if she wanted. I am just glad that she will be able to walk to the park every now and then before she heads off to college, considering that she moved to Gilroy when she was in kindergarten.
What really bothers me about the lack of parks in the northwest quad is that the city seemed to totally ignore the growing need for parks here while “fast tracking” parks in other parts of the city. It became apparent to me that we in the northwest area of Gilroy suffered from a perception problem. Bad press, the popularity and success of the only school in the northwest quad, the misconception that this area was an affluent enclave and the ridiculous notion that we were lacking in diversity all contributed to the lack of motivation and commitment to building parks in my neighborhood.
I truly believe that one of the reasons we had no city parks in place as the population boomed here is that the parks and recreation department thought we weren’t worthy. Money needed to be spent for the good of the whole city, money needed to go to parks where lower income families lived, people in the northwest quad could buy there own jungle gyms. (The truth is that most homes here have postage-stamp sized backyards and it’s hard to build even a private park on a 6,000 square foot lot.) Of course, this part of town is not and has never been a wealthy enclave. The northwest quad is a diverse middle-class neighborhood, and a huge portion of the city’s tax dollars, an especially large portion of the parks and recreation tax dollars, were generated by the housing boom here over the past two decades.
I watched the Los Arroyos neighborhood go up in the past few years, and watched as the park was being finished. My kids asked why they still didn’t have a park near our house, and I told them I didn’t know the reason, even though I did. It is not easy to tell your children that they don’t have a park to go to “because we aren’t poor” or “because we are underwriting ball fields” or “because we were supposed to have squeezed a big wooden play structure in the backyard.”
I don’t begrudge the Los Arroyos neighborhood their beautiful new park, even if they are a stones throw from Las Animas Park. Yet it saddens me to know that children in these families were deemed more worthy than my children or my neighbor’s children. I know that my children had to wait far too long for a neighborhood park and I wouldn’t want another child in Gilroy to have to wait until high school to have a place to play.
As I read the Dispatch lately, I am fascinated with how the local November election is shaping up.
It seems to me that every article quotes some constituent who has a beef with one of the current City Councilmen. But there are only five candidates running, and despite the angry voters, three will win. It will be the most interesting election in years.
I will be endorsing at least two candidates for City Council. I am still pondering endorsing a third candidate, and still hoping to retain my status as a registered Democrat. Next week – the endorsement column; “Why you should care about who I am voting for.”
