About 20 people from Rancho Cordova's White Rock Park neighborhood gathered last week to ask Cordova Recreation and Park District officials why their community's namesake had become its biggest eyesore.
"Our park has been neglected for far too long," said Ryan Lundquist, who's lived on nearby Croydon Lane for four years.
The swimming pool hasn't been filled in two years, the tennis court is cracked and sometimes a "bad element" sets up camp in the park, he said. White Rock Park has gotten so run-down, Lundquist said, that his family's motto has become "We drive to other parks."
Speaking to residents July 24 about the park just north of Highway 50 were Dave Edmonds, the park district administrator, and Guy Anderson, a long-time member of the board of directors. Also in attendance was Vice Mayor Dan Skoglund, who offered insight as to what the city was doing to address the issue. He said officials of the city and the park district are discussing how to reallocate city parks money to add to White Rock Park's improvement fund.
Residents peppered the park district representatives for about an hour with questions about why their park had fallen into such disrepair and why a $2.5 million grant secured years ago wasn't being spent.
Edmonds and Anderson said it was at the top of their to-do list but previous administrations had "dreamt bigger than they could afford," as Edmonds put it.
The heart of the issue is that park district officials in the past secured $2.5 million in grant funding for a project that would have cost $10 million to build, he said.
And the grant was a competitive bid, which means that modifications to the plan could render it null and void, Edmonds said.
The district worked to pare the cost of improvements, foregoing relocation of the tennis court to just repaving it, for example, but the cost-savings measures only knocked the project's price down to $4 million, he said.
The district also secured additional funding from various sources, leaving it between $500,000 and $1 million short of its goal, he said. District officials are working to pare that amount even further – by reassessing construction costs, for one, Edmonds said.
But they have only five more years: the grant will expire in 2013. Edmonds is confident that the district will figure out some way to fund the improvements. Residents at the meeting were somewhat skeptical.
"I don't want to wait until 2013," said Mark Insco. "(By that time) my kids will be five years older."
Ruth Wise, who hosted the meeting at her home, also worried that the park's security situation would hamper any improvement efforts.
"Whatever money we put in there will end up getting destroyed" by vandals, she said.
Call The Bee's Stan Oklo- bdzija, (916) 608-7453.
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