Subject: Shoreview Park: ready to rumble?
Date: Jun 16 12:30:18 1999
From: Ed Newbold - newboldwildlife at netscape.net


Dear Tweeters,
Shoreview Park is in the city of Shoreline by the Community College and by
Boeing Creek. The park contains good bird habitat, as many lists posted over
the past year by Michael Dossett will attest. The best bird area is in the
west part of the park south of the creek and north of an existing baseball
field and soccer field. (With two playfields, this little park is already
burdened by a heavy athletic load). This is also the place where a majority of
the Shoreline City Council wants to put a new little League ballfield. The
Little League field apparently germinated with a Mariners grant of $75,000 but
the project envisioned will now cost taxpayers about $2 million. (The
Mariners have recently, privately, distanced themselves from endorsing a site
that is environmentally destructive). There are cheaper alternative sites for
a field, some involving simply coordinating times between public school fields
and the little league.

I attended two Shoreline council meetings on this project and let me tell you
a few of the people on the Shoreline City Council don't seem to be losing any
sleep over the fact that this tax-and-spend project will destroy bird habitat.
After hearing testimony about birds seen in the park, Councilor Bob Ransom
stated, "There couldn't be many birds in the Park, there's so many dogs
there." At one meeting about 50 people spoke, all opposed to the ballfield,
including a young girl who had seen a Redtail catch a Garter Snake there and a
Shoreline Professor who has brought his students there to study and observe
nature. All the eloquent testimony from so many citizens appeared to have
fallen on deaf ears.

This could be a done deal if we don't get an unprecedented turnout at the
Shoreview Community Council Chambers on July 7. I 'd like to see a first
annual Tweeters family Get-together there, one with everybody that has ever
posted or lurked! As a sidebar, Don Baccus and Dennis Rockwell will hug,
Price and Weber will have an Empid call contest, and there will be a fly-by by
a Xantu's Hummingbird. It 'll be fun, and I'll bring the lemonade.

Contact Jo Ann Laz at 206 546 6792 to sign up in advance. Jo Ann and Ray
Pelley deserve a lot of credit for creating opposition to this bit of athletic
tyranny.

Also, see my ad about this in this Sunday's Seattle Times. It should be in
the local section of the Times.



-Ed Newbold, Seattle (newboldwildlife at netscape.net)



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