Help, please - final Beverly Triton, Mayo Beach, South River Farm Park master plans

[Lisa]

Hello all,

The county will unveil the plans for the Mayo Peninsula Parks at a public meeting on Thursday, February 15, 2018 from 6 to 8 pm. The meeting will be in the DPW Building at 2664 Riva Road, Annapolis, MD 21401. Go to the Chesapeake Room on the 2nd floor. Please come and support the plans for public access improvements at these parks: Beverly Triton Beach Park, Mayo Beach Park and South River Farm Park.

Public support for these plans is important. After 30 or 40 years of exclusive park access people get set in their ways and many of the neighbors around these parks want them closed to the general public, i.e. us, again.

Background: The county bought Beverly Triton Beach Park in 1983 and opened it to the general public in 2013. The county bought South River Farm Park in 1985 and opened it to the general public limited weekday hours in 2015 and seven days a week in 2017. The county bought Mayo Beach Park in 1976 and Mayo Beach will be open 20 Public Open Days in 2018. Habits are easy to get and hard to change.

This is actually the second round of master planning for Beverly Triton. The county spent a bunch of money on a master plan around 1999 - 2000 and the neighbors convinced the county not to do the improvements and keep Beverly Triton closed. And so it went until 2013.

Hope to see you there.

Lisa

[Lisa]

Hello all,

The county will unveil the plans for the Mayo Peninsula Parks at a public meeting on Thursday, February 15, 2018 from 6 to 8 pm. The meeting will be in the DPW Building at 2664 Riva Road, Annapolis, MD 21401. Go to the Chesapeake Room on the 2nd floor. Please come and support the plans for public access improvements at these parks: Beverly Triton Beach Park, Mayo Beach Park and South River Farm Park.
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Lisa

mchottie just reminded me that this meeting was postponed from tomorrow January 31 to February 15. I announced the original date at the Bass Pro M&G - if anyone else from the M&G is planning on going please note the date change.

THANKS mchottie!

Lisa

[Lisa]

Here's the updated announcement from Rec & Parks: http://www.aacounty.org/departments/...tation-meeting

[Lisa]

Here's a link to the newest plans for the February 15 Mayo Parks meeting: http://www.aacounty.org/departments/...parks/#beverly and the new traffic study.

I've gotten word of new neighbor proposals to restrict public access to these public parks. They want to use the General Development Plan process (more on that later) to put permanently turn these public parks into restricted use nature sanctuaries and then make people get on trolleys to shuttle to the parks instead of driving to the parks. The trolley proposal includes making us put our kayaks on the trolleys to get to the parks.

Support for public access at the February 15th meeting would be great.

Lisa

[Lisa]

The traffic study just got posted to the Mayo Parks page this week:

http://www.aacounty.org/departments/...ninsula-parks/

Hope to see some of you next week on Thursday 2/15/18.

Lisa

[Lisa]

Here's a brief follow up on the February 15 2018 Mayo parks master plan presentation meeting. The crowd was 95% anti-public park access neighbors from the areas around the parks. Let's say the tone was extremely uncivil, with rude shouts from the crowd of "LIAR" at the first consultant before he got three sentences out of his mouth.

The consultants carried on professionally and presented the final master plans. The February 15 2018 Mayo Peninsula Parks Master Plans are here: http://www.aacounty.org/departments/...ninsula-parks/

The big Beverly Triton disappointment was that the neighbors got the county to reduce the planned parking spots from 154 to 90 for this 344 acre park. In contrast, Loch Haven Park, a much smaller nearby community park, has 74 spaces. With all those no parking signs outside the park that too small parking lot will ration public access far below the capacity of the park. The Beverly Triton bright spot, to me, is that the county will connect the park to the public sewer system instead of installing a septic system. That's an environmental win.

Informed rumor has it that the neighbors want a nonprofit to take over ownership of Beverly Triton and have park users shuttle in on a trolley, including our kayaks, from the parking lot at the high school on 214. Yes, they want us to wait for a trolley and unload and reload our yaks.

Beverly Triton Beach Park is the only one of the parks potentially in the new budget. I started a new thread on how you can ask the County Executive to include money for the Beverly Triton improvements in his budget. Budget meetings with County Executive Steve Schuh Thursday March 1 and Tuesday March 6.

See you in the new thread

Lisa