On May 21, the Coronado City Council passed a Cays Park Master Plan, which, according to engineers' estimates, will cost Coronado taxpayers $31.5 million but will likely exceed $40 million due to the rising costs of inflation.
Only three members of the City Council approved the Cays Park Master Plan without Mayor Bailey present. Councilmember John Duncan voted against the plan, and Councilmembers Casey Tanaka, Carrie Downey, and Mike Donovan all voted to approve the plan.
What was wrong with the vote?
In 2019, the City's consultant, Van Dyke Landscape Architects, asked Coronado residents if the Cays Park met their needs. 75.5% of respondents answered that question with a four or a five on a 5-point scale, 5 being the highest score possible. Less than 25% of the respondents wanted a new park. Only 8.9% of the respondents wanted to see “significant changes including wholesale reconsideration of [the] park layout.” (89% of the respondents were from the Coronado Cays).
The City Council relied on a letter which said the Coronado Cays Homeowners Association favored the park. However, the Association never polled the Coronado Cays homeowners.
Three separate petitions were submitted to the City Council to oppose the new park, which received 660 signatures in total. The City Council ignored these community voices.
The City Council did not discuss the project's cost or share the costs of each feature in the proposed park before approving the master plan.
The City Council has yet to address the potential for unearthing hazardous waste because Cays Park was built on land that was formerly the City's trash dump.
What is proposed is an urban park, which is feature-laden and very maintenance intensive. Coronado Cays residents do not feel that the City appropriately maintains the current park and fear a new park would be maintained poorly as well.
The Cays Park Master Plan removes the baseball diamond that seniors in our community use.
A view deck will be constructed near the highway. To construct the deck, part of the block wall that serves as a noise barrier will be removed, which will bring more highway noise to the Cays community.
Coronado has several other projects in the pipeline with very high price tags: two new fire stations are necessary, upgrades to underground drainage are necessary to avoid the flooding that we experienced this January, the irrigation system on the golf course is due for replacement, and there is talk of renovating or expanding the Winn Room at the library. We must get our priorities straight: public safety and infrastructure must come first.
We ask Councilmembers Casey Tanaka, Carrie Downey, and Mike Donovan to request reconsideration of this vote at the next City Council meeting so that all of the above items can be discussed. We feel that Coronado should not be investing this much money in one park, especially when the Coronado Cays homeowners do not want this massive regional park in their neighborhood.