Port Townsend parks plan reels in survey results

PORT TOWNSEND — City residents continue to rank walking, hiking and being in nature among their top recreational activities, and parks staff is working to identify gaps in service.

Port Townsend’s parks department and BERK Consulting of Seattle will present public survey results and run through park-building scenarios next week.

The workshop will be conducted at 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Cotton Building, 607 Water St., in downtown Port Townsend.

Alex Wisniewski, the director of the city’s parks, recreation and community services department, said more than 900 people took the online survey last month.

It asked people how they currently use parks, which ones they visit, what types of activities they enjoy, and what the city is not providing.

“Our goal is to provide some gap analysis and find where we are missing the mark,” Wisniewski said.

The work is intended to update a six-year plan last adopted in 2014.

The city had a two-day workshop Oct. 11-12 in addition to the month-long survey, and Wisniewski said he provided a number of presentations throughout town.

There were 115 people combined during the workshop, and 927 responses to the survey, he said.

“That’s nearly 10 percent of the city’s population, which is fantastic,” Wisniewski said.

At a few pop-up stations at the Food Co-Op, Safeway and others, people were asked to answer a two-question survey right on the spot, he said.

The top three public responses, which focused on walking and hiking, were the same as initially found in 2010.

“That speaks volumes to having a well-thought-out and good trail system, to provide those types of activities and connections between neighborhoods, parks and schools,” Wisniewski said.

Many people also said they enjoy the Mountain View Pool, and there was a lot of interest in playgrounds and picnicking, he said.

On Tuesday, people were out at the parks.

At the Mountain View Dog Park, one of the city’s newest facilities, several people gathered once the sun broke through the clouds.

Eliza Staten of Port Townsend brought a toy connected to a long pole and swirled it around her head as Jasper, her pit bull mix, chased it down.

The temperature was a little cooler in the shade at Chetzemoka Park, where a woman was weeding a garden bed along the walking path of Port Townsend’s oldest park, established in 1904.

Those who attend next week’s meeting will help finalize the guiding principles in the plan and design a mock park with what the community desires.

“We’ll take a look at our existing parks, some developed and some not, and we’re hearing about the types of facilities that are desired,” Wisniewski said.

“We’ll be playing around with stuff like that — broad, open-ended concepts — and then we’ll start to whittle down to what we’re hearing from the community.

“What does that look like geographically?”

The plan also is key to future funding opportunities through grants.

“This plan is basically for the next six years, but it’s really premised on looking out much further than that,” Wisniewski said. “This will help us with setting goals and objectives we can accomplish in the next six years.”

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Jefferson County Managing Editor Brian McLean can be reached at 360-385-2335, ext. 6, or at bmclean@peninsuladailynews.com.