Chairman’s Report

by Bruce G. Brown

What does 2017 have in store for the MMRC?

The most important role the Mira Mesa Recreation Council (MMRC) has is to serve as a liaison between the City of San Diego and the Community of Mira Mesa and help make sure our community has enough park space for our growing population. With that in mind 2017 should be a very busy year.

On January 10, 2017 at 7:00 PM the Recreation Council will be hosting the first workshop for the Wangenheim Joint use and Walker Neighborhood Park area. The workshop will be held in conjunction with the Rec Council’s January meeting in the Wangenheim Middle School auditorium located at 9230 Gold Coast Dr. This area has great potential to expand the active play area by more than four acres and when completed can big a huge boost to the annual Top Gun Tournament. I have a little history with the site myself as I coached soccer for several years when my son Greg played many games and I held practices there as well. It is a big area but currently has no restroom or on-site parking. Hopefully, these issues along with several others can be addressed with the $5.6 million budget that has been allocated to this project by our Facilities Financing Plan.

At our February meeting will return to Lopez Ridge Neighborhood Park. At this meeting it is our hope that we can present some internet tools that might be helpful for all the sites we are working on. I want to thank John Pollard for calling these to my attention and I hope – with a little help from our community Town Council President (and tech guru) Ted Brengel we can have remote access to the information we need. Stay tuned.

March 14, 2017 we will be back at Salk Elementary School auditorium (7825 Flanders Dr.) to review the “first draft” of the plan the consultants come up with. This draft will have hopefully taken into account feedback they receive, from those in attendance, at our August meeting. The purpose of this workshop will be to add, change or edit the design the consultants come back with. With these tweaks they will go back to work and come up with the final version of the General Plan Description (GDP) at our May 9, 2017 meeting. It will be at this meeting that the Mira Mesa Recreation Council will hopefully approve the plan including a proposed new name.

Well that takes us through the first quarter of the year. Below are some other items that will be on future agendas but have not yet been scheduled:

• A briefing from the City Attorney Office on the “Brown Act” (no relation)
• Follow up workshop on the Wangenheim joint use and Walker Neighborhood Park
• Another workshop on the Resource Park with the Canyon Hills Open Space hopefully with some solutions to the many issues raised by our September 2016 workshop
• Opening day for the Mira Mesa Community Park (phase 1) – July
• Hopefully a start of a more detailed discussion and the hiring of the consultants for phase 2 & 3 of the Mira Mesa Community Park expansion

Should be a busy year – please attend and give us your thoughts!!