SURVEY: ESPRIT PARK RENOVATION

On Thursday, December 3rd, over 80 people participated in a 90-minute online meeting to express their ideas and concerns on future plans for Esprit Park. Many thanks to those who took the time and made the effort to raise their voices on this beloved 1.8 acre meadow so important to the Dogpatch community.

That was the first step. Now comes the second. Take a few minutes to fill out the Esprit Park Survey. The results of this survey are crucial to how the park will evolve and who it will serve. This may be your final chance to make your views known and ensure that the park truly reflects the vision of the Dogpatch residents who use it. Please take the survey now. It is open until Dec. 28.

Happy Holidays!

p.s. You can see the park designs here.

ABOUT THE SURVEY

The survey is unfortunately written in a biased way. We have several members of our team with extensive market research backgrounds and have all come to the same conclusion that this survey is written in a way to influence the public into answering it in the way Rec & Park wants.

Since day 1, Rec & Park has been pushing for artificial turf in the Dog Play Area (DPA) and used a lot of misleading data points to attempt to prove their point. Through our work with Supervisor Walton, we were able to get multiple full-grass Esprit Park options on the survey. However, Rec & Park is continuing to push their preferential language. We, and many others, have reached out to Rec & Park to give them a chance to amend their survey, but have received no actionable response. Which leads us to: Time is ticking and with no guarantee of a good faith survey update, we request that everyone read the following information before taking the survey:

Q.8 - Family Meadow

A dog free meadow is unprecedented in all of San Francisco. We do not want Esprit Park to be the guinea pig for this policy.

All families with children want no dogs - False

Many families with children have dogs as part of their family. In fact, many families without dogs love and enjoy seeing the dogs running in the park. Not all families want a dog-free area in Esprit.

Dog play areas are anti-people - False

People like to recreate with their dogs in safe open spaces. Dogs don’t walk to the parks by themselves, and they don’t play in parks by themselves. Yet many of the dog play areas in D10 are in places where humans don’t want to go - under a freeway, or in a small space covered with smelly artificial turf. These places are anti-people. Next time you see a dog play area, ask yourself whether you would want to go in there.

Q.9 - Artificial Turf

Rec & Park sets up this question by only providing misleading statements about artificial turf and failing to provide any positives about natural grass. In the community meeting, they used Upper Douglass Park and Lafayette Park DPA’s as examples, both of which are at the bottom of a hill. Esprit Park is nothing like these parks.

Artificial turf has no consequences - False

Artificial turf replaces pollution-cleansing animal habitat with a specialty petroleum product that is rarely recycled. It requires chemicals for cleanliness and has been found to be a source of micro plastics which drain into the ocean.

Q. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 - Park Options

The way these questions are ordered and worded allows Rec & Park to manipulate the results afterwards. Rather than randomizing the options to reduce order bias, they have presented them in the order they would like you to respond.

There is no question allowing you to rank the options or definitively pick one.

In order to provide the most easily analyzed data set, you must select “Supports Very Well” or “Supports Well” ONLY on the ones you want. So, in this case, you might put “Does Not Support” for U, V, W and put “Supports Very Well” in X, Y, Z.

Only voting using the extremes of the scale will guarantee that your preference is analyzed correctly.

Friends of Esprit Park is a neighborhood organization dedicated to supporting Esprit Park as a multi-use, community enriching, open green space.

@FriendsofEspritPark

You are receiving this email because you expressed interest in Esprit Park, are a member of Esprit Park Volunteer Gardeners, or are a member of Toes & Paws for Green Space.