Gifts from God and Payne Park - It has been suggested I write about the decision to move the Gifts from God "Sunday Picnic in the Park" from Gillespie Park. I don't think I need to detail the issues the Gillespie Park neighborhood has been raising for a number of years, so I will talk about my thought process.

For background, the city ordinance that governs the issuance of permits for gatherings greater than 75 people in city parks has provisions as follows:

A special event permit may only be issued for a specified limited period of time and shall set forth conditions or requirements as shall be deemed necessary to mitigate potential adverse effects upon the public park and neighboring properties…

Our ordinance also specifies that:

An application for special event permit may also be denied on any of the following grounds:….
…..(8) There are alternate locations available, within the public park, or at another public park, where the event may reasonably be located without creating the type or degree of potentially adverse effects it is anticipated would result at a site for which the special event permit is requested;

Said very simply, having been granted the authority under the ordinance to do so, I determined that the Payne Park site offered an opportunity to mitigate neighborhood impacts based on the significant buffer areas that exist there that do not exist around Gillespie Park.

We will continue to monitor the situationto ensure that this conclusion is indeed valid, and hope to hear from the neighbors if there are conflicts. All in all, I continue to believe this is a better solution for conducting this legal activity.