Letters from the week of July 30

Feature: “Park Players,” July 23

I applaud Nadia Pflaum for addressing public parks at a time when we are all looking at how the Kansas City Parks Board will handle a report submitted by the Dog Park Task Force on July 21. The report came after a year and a half of extensive research, on-site visits and numerous public meetings throughout the city to hear citizen input, both positive and negative, regarding off-leash dog areas within city parks. Now, after task-force findings are finally available, the Parks Board wants further public meetings. This is the same Parks Board that said publicly in September 2007 that it had heard plenty of information from all sides of the dog-park issue, and abruptly halted any discussion and arbitrarily amended dog-park criteria with no comments allowed; only when faced with possible legal action did the board agree to appoint a task force to continue discussion and research the issue.

The Parks Board’s asking for more discussion at this point, after all that has taken place, is ludicrous and appears to be merely a technique to stall the process of approving dog parks. This ploy delays advocate groups from beginning fundraising and taking steps to make this long-awaited goal a reality for Kansas City. Let’s hope that reason will prevail and that we can move forward without further delay.

Barbara Abend
Kansas City, Missouri

Thank you to Nadia Pflaum for her recent feature about the Kansas City parks and her Plog post (“Task force recommends Sunnyside Park for off-leash dog park; Commissioner Stackhaus’ eyebrows beg to differ”) that exposed the egregious behavior of Aggie Stackhaus at the July 21 Parks Board meeting.

The Dog Park Task Force recently turned in recommendations for a master plan for citywide dog parks after more than a year of research and five public hearings. The Parks Board now claims that it needs more public input. Perhaps the Parks Board should read its own 2008 citizen survey, in which nearly every request in the comments section was for more dog parks. (This information was not mentioned anywhere in the Parks and Recreation’s Department’s published survey results.) These are the same commissioners who cut off all public comment two years ago by refusing to allow dog-park advocates to speak at a public hearing.

If the Parks commissioners wanted to know what the public thought, why did none of them attend a single one of five public hearings on this subject presented by the task force?

When anyone in favor of dog parks has spoken over the last three years, Commissioner Aggie Stackhaus has rolled her eyes, sighed, whispered to other Parks Board commissioners, even closed her eyes as if napping — exactly as she did last week. She should recuse herself from the dog-park vote and restore some faith in our city government.

As for me and other off-leash advocates who have been subjected to Aggie’s disrespectful and dismissive behavior for three years now, it no longer shocks us. At this point, if Aggie’s head suddenly began spinning like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist during a Parks Board meeting, we would likely just sigh and look at our watches. Nothing shocks us any more. Our faith in city government no longer exists. That’s sad.

Deb Hipp
Kansas City, Missouri

The Dog Park Task Force presented its very well-done guidelines for citywide dog parks. The very straightforward guidelines were what you would expect: fencing, water source, parking, etc. All that the commissioners had to do was vote for or against accepting the guidelines.

When did trying to do so much good for our beloved city become such a fight? If all the dog owners moved to cities with dog parks, the only people left in Kansas City would be the old, crotchety people who don’t want progress or change and people who teach their children to whine about nothing and to never try anything new.

Carmen Root
Kansas City, Missouri

Correction: Our July 16 review of Café Europa misidentified the restaurant’s owners. They are Andy Atterbury and Gwyn Prentice.

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