Bob White Park

[Jeff_LaG]

From: http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17793563&BRD=1679&PAG=461&dept_id=86218&rfi=6



02/01/2007
Resolution of expenditures to be discussed
By Carl Rotenberg


UPPER MERION - The Board of Supervisors may discuss a proposed policy requiring prior board approval of capital expenditures that exceed $5,000 at the Feb. 1 work session.
The draft resolution would calculate the monetary value of township labor costs, rental of equipment and the cost of materials, said Supervisor Vice Chairman Joseph N. Bartlett Jr.

The policy is aimed at publicizing township expenditures, in advance, that residents might want to comment on before the work commences.
The park and recreation board, the supervisors and township officials were lambasted at three public meetings recently for allowing a nine-hole disc golf course to be installed at Bob White Park. Residents living near the park bounded by Croton, Raven and Bob White roads criticized the lack of transparency to the approval process, the rapidity of the installation work last fall and the absence of public input.
The proposed resolution could be enacted at the Feb. 15 supervisors' meeting, Bartlett said.
"The cost of the golf course would not have been covered by the new policy," he said, "but by adding the labor costs of public works employees and the rental of the brush cutter it would have exceeded $5,000."
"The process wasn't handled in the best possible manner," Bartlett said. "Sometimes you need to approach things differently."
The heavy growth of three varieties of vines in the woods where the disc golf course was installed prompted Bartlett to promise their eventual eradication.
"All the vines have to go," he said. "I was appalled at the condition of the trees and the vines. The vines are going to kill the trees."
Three vines, a berry vine, a wild grape, and a mile-a-minute vine, are growing in the underbrush of the upper park near Croton Road.

©King of Prussia Courier 2007

[Jeff_LaG]

From: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/...a_dustup_2.html (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/montgomery/nabes/20070408_Disc-golf_course_causes_a_dustup_2.html)


Disc-golf course causes a dustup
The project in Bob White Park in Upper Merion has stalled while concerned neighbors have their say.
By Bonnie L. Cook
Inquirer Staff Writer
Two weeks before Christmas, Neil Beebee learned that he soon would be seeing Frisbees flying through the air a stone's throw from his backyard in Upper Merion's Bob White Farms development.

Local players had persuaded the township to carve a $2,925 disc-golf course out of a brushy area in Bob White Park just over Beebee's fence. Though township supervisors voted to pay the bill, the public wasn't notified about the project.

So when Beebee and his neighbors were invited to the Jan. 6 opening of the finished course, they threw a fit, starting a furor that has stalled the project and caused changes to township policy.

"It was a bit of a shock to me to learn that people are going to be looking in my backyard, in a place I assumed to be very private," Beebee told a meeting of the Upper Merion Park and Recreation Board on March 13.

His protest was echoed by others complaining that the course was installed without citizen input or formal due process by the township's Board of Supervisors.

Neighbors feared that the course would draw traffic and outsiders to what has been a cloistered development; that wayward discs might hit motorists on the nearby Schuylkill Expressway; and that using parkland for the game would erode the value of their homes.

"This will have a permanent impact on us," lawyer and neighbor William H. Sawyer said.

Two disc-golf advocates who designed the course, then sold the township on the idea, said they couldn't understand the public outcry.

Peter L. Kuhn and Donald "Stu" Straw, both neighbors of the park, believed they were helping by building the course themselves and offering to maintain it for free. They didn't foresee objections.

The two said they had converted scrubby, unused parkland into a place for community recreation.

"It's unfortunate," Straw said of the controversy as he walked the course recently. "The fact that this park is used, or may be used, is what we ought to be looking at here."

Disc golf was invented in the mid-1970s by Ed Headrick, who patented the Frisbee. The game is played on a natural fairway of woodlands and paths, not grass.

The player throws a plastic disc smaller and heavier than a Frisbee toward a series of nine "holes." Each hole is a metal basket loosely strung with chains so that the disc will strike them and fall in. The player who completes the course with the fewest throws wins.

The parks board tabled the matter March 13. The panel will meet again at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. It wasn't known if the parks board would vote on the project, but even if it does, the recommendation isn't binding on the supervisors.

Compounding the situation is the fact that David Broida, Upper Merion's longtime park and recreation director, retired Jan. 5, leaving the township to face neighbors' claims that the course was "sneaked through."

"Nothing was sneaked through," Broida said in an e-mail. "This was discussed at public meetings, was approved by the Board of Supervisors and the park and rec board - it's a matter of public record. However, some neighbors did not know about the project - that's true."

Township spokesman Ed Higgins said the supervisors voted, 4-1, on Jan. 18 to approve the monthly accounts payable, including the funds for the course.

There was no separate vote on the project, but Higgins said the project dovetailed with the park department's aim of clearing weeds and kudzu vines from the park.

"What was not done that should have been done, even though it wasn't in the ordinance, there should have been public notification," Higgins said.

In response to the flap, the township's supervisors changed the ordinance Feb. 15. Now, any capital project bordering a neighborhood must include a plan for citizen input, Higgins said.

"Some of us think that it's unfortunate that this happened," Higgins said, "because now all types of routine replacements are going to require public involvement programs."

On the other hand, he said, "the situation at Bob White was dramatic enough that it should have been taken to the public."

[Jeff_LaG]

From: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/...se_in_park.html (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/montgomery/nabes/20070415_Upper_Merion_to_consider_disc-golf_course_in_park.html)


Upper Merion to consider disc-golf course in park
Upper Merion Township's Park and Recreation Board will consider whether to allow a disc-golf course at Bob White Park when it meets at 7:30 p.m. May 8, the board chairman said Tuesday.

John Tallman told a public meeting that cold weather had prevented the board from conducting research on the course, which a group of neighbors opposes.

Disc golf is a game in which plastic discs are thrown into metal baskets along a natural course. The player who completes the course in the fewest throws wins.

The matter was tabled Tuesday after a short discussion. Only four of the seven members on the volunteer panel were present. Tallman said no vote could be taken until the board was sure the course posed no hazards.

The meeting will be at the Township Building, 175 W. Valley Forge Rd., King of Prussia. For more information, call 610-265-1071. - Bonnie L. Cook

[doot]

Holy NIMBY