` Friends of Five Creeks Volunteers preserving and restoring watersheds of North Berkeley, Albany, Kensington, south El Cerrito and Richmond since 1996 1236 Oxford St., Berkeley, CA 94709 510 848 9358 [email protected] www.fivecreeks.org June 11, 2021 David Koo, Ramon Solid, and Brennan Cox, Groundworks Office Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Commission, City of Albany Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Director Isabelle LeDuc, City of Albany 1000 San Pablo Ave., Albany, CA 94706 (via email [email protected] ) Re: June 13 workshop on Albany Parks Master Plan; incorporating natural areas’ maintenance needs and support for volunteer groups into the plan Commissioners, Staff, and Consultants: Albany is at a historic high point in management of its natural areas – primarily its creeks, Albany Hill, and Albany Bulb, an amazing store of treasures in a small city. This letter attempts to distill more than 20 years of experience with Albany’s natural areas into suggestions for modest but important improvement, based on both lessons learned and on coming challenges, ranging from more residents in dense housing to global warming. Carrying out old ideals: The new Albany Parks Master Plan is an opportunity to put meat on the bones of stated ideals like these: [Albany residents want] a naturalistic environment that supports native habitat and educates residents about local vegetation and wildlife (2004 Parks Master Plan, Demand Analysis) [Creeks as] an important open space element, and a means of defining the edges of the city and bringing open space and nature into neighborhoods (2016 Albany General Plan, Policy PROS-17) [Albany will] continue to support the work of Friends of Albany Hill, Friends of Five Creeks, and others . .to enhance open space and trail potential of Codornices, Cerrito, Village Creek, and other natural areas of the city. (Albany 2016 General Plan, PROS – 6.E) and “Support collaboration opportunities with non-profit organizations on park projects and programming” (current Parks, Recreation, and Open Space Commission work plan). A major goal of planning documents is to prioritize and obtain grants for large, costly capital projects. Friends of Five Creeks strongly supports one such project: completing the Codornices Creekside Trail. Albany already has most of the money needed, from leftover Measure R funds that must be spent on creeks. Albany’s 2016 General Plan says it would be completed as part of building Belmont Village. In general, though, the greatest need of Albany’s treasured natural areas is for modest ongoing support for maintenance, citizen efforts, and very small physical improvements. These needs tend to be overlooked partly because they are different from those in mown city parks. The city’s classification shows this distinction: The Key Route Median is classed as “active recreation”: maintenance $8000/acre in the 2004 Parks Master Plan. The trail along Cerrito Creek, where many people enjoy nature and family, walk dogs, do tai chi, meditate, and more, is classed as passive open space: maintenance $2,500/acre. In fact, immediately following the 2004 plan, Creekside Park was almost entirely abandoned. Friends of Five Creeks is a partner project of 501(c)3 Berkeley Partners for Parks 1 A new plan should break the boom-bust cycle that has characterized Albany’s Open Spaces: That early 2000s abandonment of Creekside Park was one of several instances of major spending followed by neglect. Rebuilding the sewer line along Cerrito Creek in 1998-99 provided a pool of mitigation money that was spent for “restoration.” When that money was gone, tall weeds and creek-choking blackberries took over. Over more than a decade, Friends of Five Creeks volunteers spent thousands of hours removing weeds, controlling erosion, and planting natives; built steps; and paid for benches and signs, to create today’s urban oasis. In the past two years, Creekside Park and Albany Hill have been spruced up with handicap access and rebuilt steps and trails. This happened because a big pool of leftover late-1990s Measure R bond funds had to be spent there fairly quickly, because the bonds matured and the money had not been spent for its voter-intended purpose, buying land on Albany Hill. Wildfire danger and dying trees may keep attention on Albany Hill. Otherwise, however, continued care is far from certain. Albany adopted a first master plan for Albany Hill and Creekside Park in 1991-2. When it updated that plan in 2012, in large measure to justify grants and detail measures for fire safety, the city had not carried out any of the plan’s capital improvements, such as trails, benches, or signs. On Codornices Creek below San Pablo Avenue, when state grants for “restoration” ran out, the area was severely neglected by all three responsible agencies: Albany, Berkeley, and UC Berkeley. Dumping, camps, and weeds soon overran what was intended as a vibrant greenway along our area’s only trout stream. Our volunteers are still struggling to recover what was lost. Paid stewardship is making a big difference, because Friends of Five Creeks discovered and recovered a half-million dollars in maintenance money earmarked for the creek from 8th Street to the railroad tracks. It is far from certain that this care will continue when that money runs out. A similar pattern can be traced on the Albany Bulb: Twice, homeless camps were allowed to dominate, requiring expensive cleanups. Plans do not assure anything, but a new Parks Master Plan can move toward replacing this boom-bust pattern with modest stable funding and thoughtful, knowledgeable maintenance. This is vital now for several reasons: During the COVID shutdown, we have all seen the value of nature for mental and physical health. Thoughtful stewardship is essential as the East Bay faces growing risks of fire, flood, and loss of plant and wildlife species due to global warming. Stewardship may help preserve varied and beautiful native plants, wild birds and mammals that enrich our lives, and threatened species such as the trout clinging to a toehold in Codornices Creek to the remnant monarchs on Albany Hill. How to provide modest ongoing support for natural areas in the new Parks Master Plan: Here are some beginning ideas for plan provisions that could break the boom-bust cycle in Albany’s natural areas: Accurate categories: Grouping is necessary, but misleading lumping has consequences. New groupings and new categories may be needed. For example, why are Catherine’s Walk and the Key Route Median “active,” but the Cerrito Creek greenway “passive”? Why does the General Plan table 6.1, “other active open space areas,” list the volunteer-run Gill Tract farm project, but not Codornices Creek and its greenway? There are enough other such instances to merit thorough review. Accurate information on spending and volunteer contributions: The plan should commit the city to reporting actual spending on maintenance of so-called “passive” open spaces, side by side with Friends of Five Creeks is a partner project of 501(c)3 Berkeley Partners for Parks 2 estimates of the dollar value of work done by volunteers. Fuzzing these in public documents, such as reports on Measure R bond spending, has created misleading impressions. This need for sunshine includes Albany’s promise of publicly available records on spending from the Codornices Creek maintenance fund. Trial and review of specific ways to support citizen efforts: As part of “collaboration opportunities with non-profit organizations on park projects and programming,” a goal of the PROSC’s current work plan, Albany should commit to specific experiments, on a trial basis with scheduled reviews. Examples include the following: o A small annual budget for volunteer efforts – for example, tool storage on the Bulb, bags and gloves, and volunteer-produced signs and furniture. (When Friends of Five Creeks was founded in 1996, Albany bought its first hip waders and water-testing materials.) o Clear points of contact for citizens groups to report problems, make suggestions and propose projects, and seek publicity for events, e.g., in the Albany e-news. (El Cerrito does this routinely. Albany has publicized nonprofit events, but a recent request for information on how to ask for publicity got no response.) o Fulfilling Albany’s promise, made after Friends of Five Creeks discovered the forgotten half- million dollars for Codornices Creek, for an annual public meeting with notice to all creek stakeholders, including sports teams using the adjacent fields and Berkeley property owners. The current PROSC work plan reduces this to “receive presentation.” The three managing agencies continue meeting in secret. Robust partnerships with large organizations: Collaboration does not stop with small, citizen-led groups, of course. o East Bay Regional Park District: Albany needs to partner effectively with both the East Bay Regional Park District and Love the Bulb to support what has become one of the East Bay’s busiest parks, a major natural and cultural magnet. o School District: Working with the school district is vital both for appropriate public recreation on school-owned properties and for Albany school children to learn about the beauty, complexity, and power of nature – knowledge essential for our survival. o Berkeley and UC Berkeley: Friends of Five Creeks has repeatedly stressed the need for a revised memorandum of understanding on Codornices Creek maintenance. The defects are shown by a decade of experience, plus ongoing issues with unstable dying trees, flood risk, fires at campsites, public health issues at camps, trash pickup, and graffiti. o Neighboring cities: Stewardship and public use along Albany’s borders requires robust partnerships with El Cerrito, Richmond, and Berkeley. Political boundaries and property lines run straight, leaving awkward slivers of bank. At Creekside Park, both banks of Cerrito Creek are in El Cerrito; any bridge would require partnership.