It’s the $930 million question: Does Library Park matter?
It clearly doesn’t based on the updated parks and recreation master plan adopted earlier this year by the Manteca City Council.
It lists the 1.75-acre Library Park as having a gazebo and interactive water play feature.
It is a bit strange given the $930 million in needs over the next 30 to 60 years that the master plan update addresses made it a point of suggesting repurposing parks and facilities that are underutilized didn’t mention anything about improvements to Library Park.
It is listed as having an interactive water play feature.
But it is more like a $400,000 investment in fancy cement graphics with benches emulating railroad boxcars.
The interactive water play feature hasn’t been used since 2016. It is the ultimate definition of underutilized, yet the consultants never addressed it.
Nor did they talk about something almost as underutilized, which is the Library Park gazebo.
Given at one point the majority of the current council was involved in an attempt to seek private sector proposals on to repurpose the park, basically as a food court channeling the container park in Las Vegas, it’s more than curious why the future of Library Park wasn’t mentioned in the update.
City leaders made it clear they wanted something done even though the food court idea didn’t pan out.
The Library Park expansion and makeover completed in 2012 was clearly not successful.
The city at the time — still smitten with the idea of doing things as inexpensively as possible — cut out a recycling system to save $80,000 or so in the project.
They let the water from the play feature go directly into the wastewater system instead of being treated and recycled for reuse.
The fact the city acted surprised that the state four years later in in the midst of another drought banned such water features that didn’t recycle water made one wonder what they were thinking — or if they ever did.
The last time an estimate was given to retrofit the water play feature with the ability to recycle water it was put at $400,000.
But here’s the real rub.
The city spent $1.4 million on the much heralded park expansion and redo yet today the use of Library Park is a fraction of what it was before work started.
Yes, we know. It’s all the fault of the homeless.
There’s just one little detail. The council is glossing over their own self-congratulatory reviews about how the homeless problems that plagued downtown has severely dropped off.
Those reviews, regardless of what you think about the city under the current council’s leadership, is spot on.
Yet, nothing has been proposed to revitalize or repurpose Library Park.
One would have thought the proper time to address that would have been when the park and recreation master plan was updated.
After all, that’s when all of the community focus groups were conducted and the city has professional recreation and park planning experts to guide the process.
The process highlighted looking for possible more intense uses for the baseball fields at Morezone Park and Marion Elliott Park that have actually been used on a consistent basis for the past 10 years.
That’s opposed to the water play feature that has been basically a $400,000 seating area for the past decade and a gazebo only used during street fairs.
Heaven forbid if it was programmed by the city for music in the park. That’s why the 75-seat amphitheater was built and grassy areas under trees planned for people to listen to concerts or other entertainment on the gazebo stage, wasn’t it?
Someone, once and for all, needs to pony up to the fact they don’t care for the idea that Library Park functions as a park that people use.
The current council has a point that they’ve been cleaning up the aftermath of short-sighted decisions made over the years by inadequate funding, lack of follow through, or both.
But why hasn’t there been a serious talk about Library Park’s future instead of just throwing up their hands and walking away?
There needs to be a talk about retrofitting the water play feature or replacing it with a new one or some other function.
Is it worth taking Measure Q funds, park fees, or community block grant money to make it work?
Some of the city’s lowest income neighborhoods are within walking distance of the park.
At the same time, the city is embarking on efforts to encourage increasing the residential density of the city’s core.
Those two things alone should require not treating Library Park as an afterthought.
Instead, what the city did a few years ago was channel the impression that they’ve given up when they requested proposals it transform the park into a quasi-public space.
Do no misunderstand. City Manager Toni Lungren is right when she cautions the city can’t do everything at once and still has limited funds considering needs and wants even with having the Measure Q sales tax for 20 years.
But it is also clear no real serious thought to Library Park’s future was given when the master plan that cost tax dollars to conduct was updated.
Perhaps Ascend will do so over the next 18 months when they develop a specific plan for downtown.
In doing so, is having Library Park no longer function as a park in one way or another on the table?
I know, I know.
We have to wait to see what the process comes up with.
But when you’ve had suggestions from a few years ago that it should be a city hall and parking structure before the suggestion was made that it could be developed by the private sector as a food truck using repurposed shipping containers, you have to wonder whether the city is going to throw in the towel on Library Park.
The question needs to be asked of the council: What are their intensions when it comes to the future of Library Park?
It’s a legitimate question now that it will be part of a yet another downtown study.
Especially, given it is the last downtown study that led to the $1.4 million investment in Library Park in the first place.
This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
