Letter: What’s the hurry in giving Quarry Park to the county?

Quarry Park is the only community park in unincorporated Midcoast that is operated by Midcoast Park Lands (MPL) a local organization.  MPL is in the process of transferring management of Quarry Park to the county and terminating a lease agreement with the county.

If 39.5-acre Quarry Park were combined with the adjacent 473-acre Wicklow property owned by Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST) the Midcoast would have a much larger community park.  In a recent interview Dave Holland, MPL Board Member and County Parks & Recreation Director suggested combining Quarry Park with the Wicklow property to make one huge coastal parkland corridor. With MPL currently in the process of transferring management of Quarry Park to the county it looks like the Midcoast will soon lose a community park rather than gaining a larger community park.  What the Midcoast will soon end up with is another poorly maintained county park.

Keet Nerhan sold Quarry Park to the county in 1995. In Nerhan’s deed agreement with the county he specified that the county would transfer the park to a public entity. Quarry Park and Moss Beach Park are the only community parks on the Midcoast.

At the July 21, 2008 MPL board meeting Fran Pollard moved to rescind the offer to transfer Quarry Park to the county.  Fran suggested delaying the transfer a couple months to give Granada Sanitary District an opportunity to reorganize into a Community Services District that would provide recreation services in addition to current GSD services. 

At the meeting board member Len Erickson explained that one of the fundamental reasons MPL has been pushing for the transfer is that Dave Holland said that the county would not take acquisition of the Wicklow property unless MPL transferred the Quarry Park lease to the county.  Fran responded by saying she spoke with Rich Gordon recently and Rich said the county could take acquisition of the Wicklow property and not Quarry Park.  MPL board members did not support Fran’s motion to rescind the transfer.

More recently the MPL board has decided to focus its energy on working with Dave Holland on developing the El Granada median strips into parks.  The county owns the El Granada median strip property.

If you don’t live in El Granada the overgrown media strips might be slightly less important than a larger park deeded to the county specifically for use as a Midcoast community park. 

MPL meetings are not open to the public.  If they were and agendas were posted community members might have an opportunity to participate in meetings.  This participation might take the form of funding the Quarry Park insurance payments and provide the energy needed to combine lower Wicklow and Quarry Park into one larger community park. 

With the failure of Measure O the county might be willing to concentrate its efforts on the upper area of the Wicklow property and allow the local community to operate the lower area.

The MPL board of directors includes: Jim Blanchard, Dave Holland, Len Erickson, Gael Erickson, Chris Vogel, Sandy Emerson, Fran Pollard, Ron Fenech and Marty Kingshill. 

Sabrina Brennan