ed >> the joint neetlg for the planning commission and rec and park commission is back in session. we in -- were in public comment. >> if there are speakers iche called already, apoach the podium and i will call batches of names every now and then and if you can line up on that side of the room it will make it go smoother. >> i'm sam and i play for the san francisco little league. the vikings soccer. and the lacrosse san francisco riptide and all my friends at

marin country day school say why don't you live in mari in? there's so good fields and everything is so perfect but in san francisco all of the fields or most of them are like beaten up and rough or have gopher holes and stuff. >> i was going to apologize for not bringing more children to the hearing, but at this point i think that's not really an issue. my name is pam and i'm the president of the san francisco lacrosse club, the riptide, the club that sam plays for. we have 300 kids from every single part of the city. over 50 schools. our kids range if age from 7 to high school at this point. the part of the fields issues that concern me light -- right now, i wants to have as many boys like sam out there playing but the other thing nobody has

really brought up in terms of lacrosse is the girls' lacrosse on the west coast. we have gone from one team to five teams in two years of all different age groups and the from having eight teams next year or the year after is field space. we just don't have the field space for either home games or for practices and beach chalet would help us unbelievably much. we do already practice at beach chalet and i know all the comments that have been made about the gopher holes and safety. but the main thing i'm concerned about is getting more kids out there to play lacrosse and we can't do that without for fields. we have a lot of kids who want to play, but i'm going to be sending thm to marin unless we get more fields. president fong:ok. jeff, kim fernandez, rick fern,

jim shapiro, pam ruppright, sue grissom, rebecca evans, lynn benedict a.m. -- bexam, mary lynn shimik, paul kiske, andrea o'leary, terry roller. if i've called your name, you can come on up. >> well, i was the last one called, but no one else seems to be taking the space so i will go right head. my name is terry and i'm a resident ever the district. although i care for children

and recognize their need to for a place to recreate, i'm opposed to this project. stadium lighting and artificial turf have no place in golden gate park. some day they will grow up and have children of their own and we have to ask ourselves, if we approve this project what kind of a park are we going to leave them? i truly believe that this project is going to permanently and dramatically change the western end of golden gate park. this is not the type of park i would want to leave my children and certainly not the park we have today, but there is an alternative that gives kids a place to play today but preserves the park for them and their children in the future. fix the beach chalet fields but keep the natural grass. maintain habitat for wildlife. why insist on artificial turf for golden gate park and then choose natural grass for the west sunset playground? given that the two fields are

essentially the same size, why not simply witch -- switch them around? this would accomplish the same goal but eliminate the controversy. why is the department of rec and park refusing to even consider this sensible compromise. field goal -- forget about the stadium lighting. in the evening kids should be home concentrating on school work, not playing soccer until 10:00 p.m. finally take the money saved by not putting in the lights and artificial turf and use it to fix other felleds -- fields. this is a compromise that would do right -- what is right for kids today but not forget to do what is right for kids tomorrow. can i enter this into the record? mr. -- president fong: next speaker, please, that i have called? >> andrea o'leary. i almost want to say ditto to all that because basically that's what it comes down to.

all these children you heard speaking earlier i don't think they really care what they have to play on, just as long as it's nice, clean, maintained and they get access to it. that's really what they want. we can maintain these fields if we want to. that's the real issue here. we want to maintain golf courses. we have dedicated gardeners out there to keep that grass at that exact height and density and everything and they don't talk about gopher holes all that much. so why can't we do that for our play fields? there's no reason for this. but my big issue here is there are a lot of places where the small groups can come and play but they're underiletused. my neighborhood -- underutilized. do we get anybody there? not a one. we're still open for it. i'm really concerned about the dark skies. i come from a part of the country where other than africa the skies are the darkest there

and this is just such an important issue. cities really have ordinances about keeping skies as dark as they can. why? well, next month we're going to have a lunar eclipse. how many people are going to be able to see that if we keep flooding our skies with this brightness? how many blocks are you going to be doing this to try to maybe see venus in the sky? i think this is a really critical issue. i don't think this process has been very well vetted. i don't think it's been thought through. i think we're trying to rush through something here. i think this is about money i don't think it's about kids. i don't think you should certify this and i don't think you sha prove the design. thank you. -- should approve the design. thank you. >> hi, my name is sue grissom and i'm 62 years old. i'm asking you to decide this issue on logic, not emotion and

on science, not finances. based on this e.i.r. if it says this sturve safe, then this e.i.r. is defective and should be disproved. no less an authority than dr. dean edell did his medical minute on this this past monday. you can go back and hear it in the archives and he's known for getting the latest research. the professional sports teams are going back to grass for a reason. this recent study said you're one and a half times more likely to injure your knees on synthetic turf an grass. and the reason i gave my age earlier is because it's important. i suffered the past 25 years with a knee injury. over the past 60 years i've sprained my ankles a dozen times. i don't feel any pain. sprained ankles heal. broken bones heal. they're forgotten. knee injuries are forever. also based on science the effect of bright lighting on

the migration of birds is well documented, and it's not good. based on logic, you can remove the bright lighting, you can remove the synthetic turf and still have a good plan, or even better, consider the alternative such as west side playground. all i'm asking is that you keep the west side wild and disapprove this plan. it's defective. thank you. >> additional speakers called? commissioners and ladies and gentlemen, we're trying to both, commissions to try to nake process as fair as possible and i know there are a number of speakers yet. in fact there say card stack still here. because of 9 hour i've asked the organizers who have brought kids here to batch them up in very large groups and conga line them through so they have an opportunity to at least be

seen. this isafter -- san francisco and i feel like and hope my fellow commissioners feel the same, that someone who is 8 years old or 80 years old should have an opportunity to be seen at least if not heard. so i'm going to ask to quickly bring them through. if you want to assign one speaker, mr. hanon, to this large group that would be great. >> we have two teams, two speakers, starting with this guy. >> ok. hello, my name is max and i play for the vikings club and my lacrosse team is riptide. the reason why i think we should have turf fields for beach chalet is because there's a lot more injuries without turf because of all the potholes on the field and also all the practices happen, they're all cancelled because

they're rained out. and -- yeah. president fong: great. thank you. ok. this team here in the blue? or the red dragons? >> hi. i'm jett and i play on the t.r.x. fire journey. and i'd like the beach chalet fields to be turf because i play lacrosse and soccer and i play in the spring and the fall so i'd like it to be turf because it the been rained out a lot and i just haven't -- we've had a lot of times when we couldn't -- when we couldn't practice and many other teams

like sacramento or even just out there, they all have their turf fields and it's just that one field. and we can't compete. president fong: right. thanks, guys. next group? you've been waiting quite a while. >> hi. i'm barbara mcdowell and i am a soccer parent but i am in favor of real grass at the beach chalet fields. there are other fields in the outside lands that could be renovated with you i -- but i know we have a -- the technology to use the drip irrigation and gopher proofing and all the other things. i discovered that -- this when i was pouring all the -- the rest of the coffee on the grass and it gets recycled. if you put the grounds in a gopher hole they move. so there are even biofriendly things that we can do to re cycle the grounds that we have.

i just say be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. during an el nino year when it pours every weekend and you have your unverted umbrella, your kids playing on the tirble tissue might think wow, those lucky kids that got rained out there are playing on the real grass. you know, you never really know. we are hearing oh, we got rained out. well, that is rained out. you can embrace that. go to a matinee with your kids and do those things you didn't get to do and you can embrace the fact that if they're literally bouncing off the walls take them to the house of air. you can book time in there. i live equi distant to the ocean at the beach chalet field and i wouldn't put fake grass out in the yard so my kids could play out in the fog and rain at night.

[timing bell] also the sweat and spilled food and animal droppings and all the other things that go on the astroturf is biohazard and it sits on top and then you have to put the chemicals on because it's a high traffic area so we're going to be killing everything. i don't find that the utopia of having the artificial turf, the art tirble grass, it's more of a biohazard because it's designed for heavy traffic. president fong: thank you very much. next group, please? >> hello. my name is liam and i play on the s.f. united soccer team. soccer players are not a special interest group. we represent every zip d.o.d. -- code in the city. we are the future of the city ard -- and we are the city. artificial turf can be maintained in played on in all kinds of weather.

9% of be be players polled prefer artificial turf. the players who use beach chalet support the project. those who oppose it do not use the fields and use other areas of the park. also on turf you can't get rained out and even if it's raining i really do love soccer and would like to play soccer. please move forward with this project. thank you. [applause] >> are you with a youth group, sir? >> yeah. good evening, commissioners. leo cafferty. i'm with san francisco glen. we have 150 kids that pass through here and 150 kids waiting outside so we've opted to syndicate since it's time to go home and do the homework. i'll speak first. so, you know, in 1939 there was

sand dunes and fields. there is an airam photograph overhead of what the fields look like in 1939. they've been there that long. there's been changes. we can call the birds newbies and the trees, but golden gate park is beautiful. it's probably 1,000 acres. we're talking about maybe i think six or seven acres that have been there. we spend $1 million on an e.i.r. while we're trying to turn turf to grass, $1 million of wasted money in my opinion. we have 20,000 kids that are playing soccer. 20,000 kids in the city. so the difference between field turf and grass, if you're playing on a yearly basis, you have -- if you play on a yearly basis you basically have, if you have three fields of grass, three big fields of grass versus one field of turf to get

to equal playing time, how does that work? because you're playing on the turf -- [timing bell] >> all year round. you have to get three fields of grass. you would have to pay to put those fields together, millions of dominique rodgers-cromartie to put three fields of grass versus one field and that's a reality. and the reality is not -- there is not enough space in san francisco, not enough fields in san francisco. there's so many kids with so many different sports at different times of the year and we need to get fields. >> thank you, south africa. thank you very much. -- >> golden gate park has had -- president fong: thank you very much. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. >> my name is john mccormick. i'd just like to ask all you adults, parents, when you were a child have you ever gone to a

child -- field and seen that? that's what it is. you can't go play in the soccer field because the fields are closed down. the fields are actually closed. i lived in san francisco, my -- played in beach chalet. i broke my leg in beach chalet playing. i've had four cart idgeage operations all from playing on grass fields. you go to sunset, it's artificial grass. it's not about the children that. out on a sunday morning, 70-year-old men playing. they're not in -- not in a hospital, they're out there getting energy. this is about the whole community. it's not just about children. it's about adults, about everybody. everybody gets benefit out of these fields. the fields right now you can't play in them. three months of the year you can't play in them. it's a nine-foot fence. no children can get in to play.

that's why the children are leaving san francisco i believe because of this. so the thing is, we are only talking about a small piece of golden gate park. not talking 25, 30 acres. you're talking about seven acres in a park. i'm an adufment i would not send my children out there. you can't even go out there, it's so dangerous. with the boards and the lights and everything. go out there, there's nobody out there because people are afraid to go out there. i beg of you, please approve this for all the children in san francisco and automatic the adults in san francisco who play soccer and play sports all year round. approve this because it will be good for the others. president fong: this is the last youth speaker, and then we'll go back to the cards, ok? >> thank you. my name is lisa and my son and husband are coming. my son is playing at beach chalet today. you may recognize me because i come and talk in front of you

from time to time about the active recreation space in the city and i can see some smiles. this is another discussion about active recreation space, but i have two children who are soccer players in the city. and as a perspective you may not know about, when they play on teams in the city, there is not enough practice space. you have to apply with park and recreation to even get practice space. sometimes my son has practice space at one field and they get center field, someone else has right field. there is never enough recreation fields in the city. but when you are able to put turf on these fields you are able to provide something that they can play on so much more time than they can now. when we play at marina green, if there is a rain storm, there's three days none of the kids can play. we go out to geneva e