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The pandemic has put the East Bay Regional Park District to the take a look at, and it has come via admirably.
With out indoor locations for us to securely go, particularly earlier than the rollout of COVID vaccines, we flocked in file numbers to the nation’s largest regional city park system. We benefitted from greater than 80 years of land acquisition that has led to a jewel of a district with 73 parks and 1,250 miles of trails spanning 125,000 East Bay acres.
We felt gratitude to those that generations in the past had the foresight to put the muse for the district as it’s in the present day and to the present leaders who proceed to broaden it and develop new leisure areas.
On the helm is the seven-member Board of Administrators, with 4 members’ phrases expiring this 12 months. Of these 4, incumbent Colin Coffey, in northern Contra Costa’s Ward 7, drew no opposition.
Board members Ayn Wieskamp, in southern Contra Costa’s Ward 6, who has served since 1999, and Beverly Lane, in southern Alameda County’s Ward 5, who has served since 1994, are retiring. Just one candidate filed to run in every ward. So Wieskamp can be changed by Olivia Sanwong, a Park Advisory Committee member, and Lane can be changed by John Mercurio, a former committee member.
The one contested race for the Nov. 8 election is in Ward 3, which incorporates Castro Valley, Fairview, Fremont, Hayward, San Lorenzo and Union Metropolis. There, incumbent Dennis Waespi faces two challengers. Waespi, who spent his total 38-year skilled profession on the park district earlier than his first election to the board in 2014, deserves a 3rd time period.
As a district worker, he labored as a park ranger, firefighter, carpenter and eventually because the supervisor of the district’s sanitation and recycling division. He nonetheless hikes every day within the parks, is aware of the district properly as evidenced by the detailed solutions he offered, and has been a part of the board that admirably led the district via the pandemic.
His faces two opponents: Gina Lewis, who served on the Union Metropolis Park and Recreation Fee, didn’t present up for her scheduled digital interview regardless of confirming her plans to attend. Lawyer Daphne Lin cites two points as her causes for operating: extra trails for mountain bikers and elimination of the killing of feral cats.
It seems that Lin has not participated or attended conferences of the district’s Path Customers Working Group nor was she accustomed to the group’s March report that included suggestions for elevated bike trails or the district’s pilot program to attempt what Lin was searching for. As for the killing of feral cats, Lin had solely imprecise data of what the district was doing, was unaware that district coverage requires deadly means solely as a final resort and didn’t supply sensible options for the threats the cats pose to endangered birds.
