A New Community Park

By Mike Kasperzak

The Whisman area needs a community park.

Because Mountain View is essentially fully developed, the only way to get new parkland is to buy it, yet the price of land keeps going up. I have advocated changing the formula the City uses to collect park construction fees so that it more realistically represents how many new people will live in a housing development. I also support and have been working towards the development of a new community park in the area of town most deficient in open space, the Whisman area. This will not be an easy park to develop because there is limited land available for purchase, and it will be very expensive. In fact, it may be necessary to seek approval from the voters before such a project could ever be successful, but we will never know unless we try.

We must also be sure the Stevens Creek Trail gets fully funded so that it extends from one end of the City to the other. Likewise, it is time to complete Cuesta Park Annex. At my urging, the Council completed a Master Planning process several years ago. It is now time to find the funding to complete the project. There are some very creative solutions on the horizon which have been spearheaded by the Mountain View based Save our Open Space (SOS) group, and I will work to make sure this opportunity is not lost.