Recreation advocates want South Shore to function better
By Kathryn Reed
Coordination and connectivity are two of the main items missing when it comes to recreation on the South Shore.
People don’t know what’s available, where things are, how to find out about them and once they figure it out things are not linked together.
Survey takers said South Lake Tahoe’s pool is an important asset. Photo/LTN file
An example is bike paths don’t lead to the parks that do exist on the South Shore.
Consultants putting together the recreation plan for the area found that 85 percent of the survey respondents believe it is either essential or very important for South Lake Tahoe and El Dorado County to offer recreation facilities, programs and public parks to residents.
“If it should be us, then the resources should be provided. It’s the only way to meet that demand,” Lauren Thomaselli, South Lake Tahoe recreation manager, said at a recreation commission meeting Oct. 17.
But the county does not provide any recreation services in the basin. It’s facilities are limited at the lake with owning Lakeview Commons and the rest of the 56-acre project area which it leases to South Lake Tahoe, and there are parks in Tahoe Paradise and Tahoma, but not run by the county.
El Dorado County Recreation Commissioner Bob Smart pointed out how the basin wasn’t even included when the county did its master plan for recreation.
Now officials are acknowledging this part of the county matters.
The South Lake Tahoe and El Dorado County recreation commissions met Thursday to get an update on where the joint Parks, Trails and Recreation Master Plan is at as well as to figure out how their respective entities could help. (Commissioner Rebecca Bryson from the city and Commissioner John Hidahl from the county were absent.)
It’s possible Douglas County will be at the table in the future because it has hired the same consultant to work on a complementary rec plan so the entire South Shore is tied together.
The master plan the city and El Dorado are putting together goes from the state line, to Tahoma and out to Twin Bridges.
Vickie Sanders, parks manager for El Dorado County, explained how the county is looking to hire a firm to create an all-encompassing website for recreation. The goal is to have links to relevant recreation partners like the U.S. Forest Service and Tahoe Rim Trail Association so it’s not just city or county provided recreation – but all recreation in the county. It would also have a calendar of events.
But it was pointed out how the end product is only as good as what gets submitted to the site for inclusion.
Because it is an El Dorado County product it will not have Douglas County information. This means the coordinated-connectivity piece for the South Shore will still be missing, at least online for the public through this future site.
City Commissioner Bonnie Turnbull expressed concern about yet another website when there are so many now.
Some of the discussion on Thursday centered on the results of the survey that asked people a slew of recreation questions. It was brought up how the city’s ice rink was not deemed very important by people but before it was built it ranked higher than bike trails and ball fields. But that was 13 years ago and demographics and items to choose from in the survey were much different.
In ranking the top three recreation items in order of importance out of a list of 18, bike trails had 55 percent of the votes, Lakeview Commons 41 percent and the recreation-swim complex 39 percent.
City Commissioner Scott Valentine mocked the 8 percent who said there is nothing to be done to improve access to parks and recreation facilities on the South Shore.
It is possible people don’t want their tax dollars spent to upgrade facilities, or they don’t use them, or all of their time is spent on the lake or in the mountains and not on/at man-made recreation entities, or maybe they don’t recreate.
What survey takers said the top three things they want are parks to connect to bike trails (62 percent), improve sidewalk access (44 percent) and provide more neighborhood parks (38 percent).
The two volunteer boards expressed a desire to meet more often. There was a time when they had meetings twice a year. They are also going to begin to share their respective minutes and agendas with each other.
Future happenings:
• In the next couple weeks the full survey will be available online via the city and county’s websites.
• A meeting on Dec. 11 at 6:30pm (location still being determined) will be the public’s opportunity to participate in a roundtable discussion about the recreation master plan.
• In January subcommittees made up of the commissioners from both jurisdictions and those on the recreation master plan committee will meet to work on six specific areas.
A website is good and useful if it ties everything together and allows search with filters.
But what really works best in my view is those tri-folded and attractive color flyers (map size) that contain a variety of mapped trails, attraction facility locations (like parks, pools, ice rinks, frisbee golf locations, etc.), and their relationships to nearby streets, building landmarks, and roads.
These can be basic maps, or overlays on topos or aerial photos, etc, with different color lines and clearly named trails placed on top of them. The backside of these can contain brief descriptions of the named trails, connections, and attractions. Advertising on the back or even on limited locations on the maps themselves can help pay for these. They should be updated annually as well.
These are much easier to carry in the pocket and pull out as needed, and view in bright sunlight than computer/smartphone screens. And no batteries to wear out. They’re good for both in-town and in-forest/recreation area use – often a few versions of different brochures for these different areas would and should be offered – not just one comprehensive but overly crowded map for everything.
In addition to that, large sturdy indoor and outdoor map boards located in multiple locations in plazas or near/along trailheads and trails (like you see at some heavily visited national forest trailheads, but duplicated for in-town use and easily accessible to visitors and residents alike). These are similar to ski area ski run maps you see, like Heavenly’s. Sometimes they’ll have artistic renderings that show what the topography and terrain look like to give a sense of mountain / valley elevations for recreation purposes.
Then this should all be reinforced with numerous and well placed trail and attraction name signs located along these connections. When these signs are high quality, of uniform design throughout the area served, and attractive trail and wayfinding signs, they give a sense of greater quality of the location and care and pride by the host area. This may seem a little thing to some people, but I strongly disagree. As a regular visitor to many different resort destination towns, it makes a difference to me in how easy I can get around in my limited time stays and how I feel about my stay and wanting to return.
Having attractive, high quality wayfinding signs and free map brochures with all the connections is appealing, helpful, and makes me think I’m in an area that has their act together. I normally stop in visitor centers (or lodging facility lobbies) first thing to see if they offer these brochures, and use them regularly during my stays.
These map brochures should be available for both the entire south shore area tied together, and for the full lake (with selected generalized features). High quality but simple design on these free brochures with key features and connections standing out in an easy to read format is preferable. These should be available in addition to the more detailed commercial topo maps and guidebooks that you can always buy at stores and visitor centers.
Not all of this has to be trail oriented. These types of maps showing building locations on local streets with their business names and descriptions on back of the brochures also help people on limited time frames to find places to visit in a new area fast. They’ve been very helpful on my recent travels.
No shortage of bicycle paths, just a little rough and convoluted for the uninitiated visitor. I moved here in 1983 and find myself guessing what way to bicycle.
Its amazing that we still don’t have a bicycle trail system. I guess when no one on the city council (past or present)recreates on a regular basis its just not a priority to build one for locals or tourists.
Trivia question for all: Who was the last person on city council who was an avid (while on council) recreationalist (skiing, biking, hiking, cross country skiing, snowboarding, snowshoer, kayaker,….). BTW, I don’t know the answer. Can’t think of anyone.
It’s common sense to tie the bike trails to parks and other destinations. I can’t believe it doesn’t.
As someone who’s been advocating ’round-the-Lake’ bike trails for a long time – with more of an emphasis on the “Average Joe & the family” – as ‘mountain bikers’ are usually where the planning is done, the ‘road bikers’ do their own thing, and these two are quite often “at odds” with each other, it is the above ‘category’ that needs encouragement for the populace to not drive so much. . . and is the biggest potential user, “left out’ as they usually are from overall considerations.
Therefore, connecting trails to Rec Facilities is a simple but effective direction to take. . .I’ve always called for someone to “recruit” former Parks & Recs head Don Radford, who had “mapped out” all the little short-cuts between streets and cul-de-sacs, as he proved it was easier & faster through town that way than by car. . .that would be a beginning ‘grass roots’ way towards the vaunted ‘mutli-modal’, which is generally bogged-down in professional ‘process’…
It goes without saying that these connections would then benefit the very recreational facilities that are under discussion as ‘underutilized’. . . and disconnected.
What is amazing to me is that the City dismantled its Recreation Department two years ago.
And now recreation is vital to the basin.
They may have dismantled the Recreation Department and then they hired new police employees to write parking tickets to drive people away from the beaches to further reinforce that encouraging access to the Lake is what not what the council wants.
If people want to recreate at the beaches, “MAKE THEM (locals and tourists) PAY”.