At least one resident, Martin Millard, has publicly urged the City Council for several years to stop team sports at Paularino Park. The issue was brought to the parks commission but didn’t get any traction until earlier this year, city recreation director Jana Ransom said.
“It seemed like we were just hearing from one person, and we’re not going to change policy for one person,” she said.
That changed recently. Other residents, particularly in the Mesa North Community Assn., said at a public meeting in May they wanted the park to be passive.
But some of the people using the park Wednesday seemed unaware of the conflict over soccer and other sports.
Maryam Parsi, who brings her three children to the park after school, said she saw people playing soccer there only once and added, “Why shouldn’t they? It’s a park.”
Janie Reiter, who brought her two small sons to the park to use the tot lot, said the trees and boulders were a good idea, because she thinks of Paularino as a neighborhood park.
“It didn’t bother me, to a certain extent,” she said of the active sports. “But it doesn’t look like a big-enough area, with the sidewalk and kids walking.”
Ransom said she’s heard no feedback since the signs went up in September, possibly because it’s getting dark too early for people to have sports matches after their workday.
“The problem activities are not taking place, and that’s pretty much the case from October until mid-April,” she said. “We don’t see a lot of adult soccer play in our parks after 6 o’clock because it’s too dark.”
The taxpayer cost of the changes seems negligible.
