Staff Deceives Park Commission and the Public

Last Monday evening, Public Works Director Gonzales claimed that the Linda Dog Park had been discussed at the Park Commission 9 times in the past two years and that is true. However, that had not been as a stand-alone agenda item with staff recommendations but simply as part of the routine Update on Park Projects item that occurs regularly on the agenda. Other than alerting the Commission that the park was closed and what short-term mitigations had been taken, there was no substantive discussion from staff about repairing the park or it closure at these 9 meetings. During the first of these updates, Director Gonzales did make this statement about the Park and process going forward:

“Its not so much even money but there’s a certain amount of process we are going to have to go through to determine what the appropriate use of that space is going to be so that’s engagement with the surrounding neighbors and the community overall. There are a few things to consider and we are kind of at the beginning at looking what those possibilities might be but absolutely this Park Commission is going to be involved with that because we are not going to make any of these decisions without bringing it before the Commission and having some discussions about what the possibilities might be, what are thoughts are and all of those things of that nature.” (Park Commission, January 2023, 1:17:00, https://piedmont.granicus.com/player/clip/2646?view_id=9&redirect=true).

At the Park Commission meeting on April 2, 2025, in his routine update on the dog park, Director Gonzales made no mention of the imminent staff recommendation to close the park. This prevented any substantive comments or questions from the Commission or the public about this matter. I think you should determine whether Mr. Gonzales knew at the time he was addressing the Park Commission on April 2 if staff would be recommending closure of the park. If so, his comments at that meeting were quite deceptive. Public aside, this is a disservice to the Park Commission which had sat through 9 previous updates and expressed interest in working to resolve issues at the dog park. From the Park Commission’s 2024 Annual Report to Council:

“The Commission has received reports from Staff in each of the last two winters about closures of the Linda park off-leash area. We are interested in reviewing options that improve availability of park space for the designated uses and best manage park resources.”

The consensus of the Park Commission seems to be that they were interested in improving the dog park, not closing it as some have stated.

It may be that Mr. Gonzales feels that with a mandate (the ADA or Water Board complaint) he feels he can proceed with autonomy because the city is facing potential “liability”. City Council should direct him to improve his conduct at engaging the Park Commission and residents in the public projects he is implementing.