Poll finds support for adding to Woodbury's Central Park

A good many residents of Woodbury say they feel only weak ties to their neighborhood and wider community, a new survey finds. And many support parks enhancements aimed at creating better connections.

In an issue that city officials highlighted over the winter as an important feature of the questionnaire, there's backing for enhancements to the city's leafy indoor Central Park.

"Residents were asked to think about Central Park and its facilities and then indicate their level of support for the city pursuing seven potential projects" there, analysts for the Colorado-based National Research Center reported to the City Council last week.

"About eight in 10 residents were in support of adding more programming space for seniors and older adults, adding more youth activity space and enhancing restaurant and food services. About three-quarters of residents were in support of updating the Lookout Ridge playground and adding more general seating while two-thirds were in support of improving banquet and meeting room space and adding more parking."

City Administrator Clinton Gridley recommended to council members that they take up the survey results and their implications for the future during a June workshop.

Gridley has spoken of a more heavily used, enhanced Central Park as promoting a stronger sense of community.

The park is an important "hangout zone for a city without a traditional downtown," he said. "But we don't have a lot of space there."

City officials note that many who feel that way are recent arrivals and that Woodbury ranks sixth highest of 16 surveyed communities in its sense of community.

In a related finding, a majority backed the creation of an outdoor swimming pool and water park. Seventy-three percent lined up behind that idea. Once informed of the cost, the majority shrank but remained fairly solid at 62 percent.

A pool and water park aren't on any immediate to-do list, said parks director Bob Klatt, but the city has been gauging citizens' general interest.

"We have been surveying that for the past few years just as a test," he said. "It's not in our [spending] plan but members of the community have suggested it and our plan has always been to work with a private entity interested in coming in and building a public facility, if that made sense."

The Research Center mailed 1,500 surveys to randomly selected residents. Responses came back from 506, "well over the 400 responses that the City received in previous years," Gridley reported.

The previous findings are included, though. Among them:

• Taxes, affordable housing and road conditions all appear to be rising as issues of citizen concern.

• Water conservation is beginning to show up as a public concern, though it still remains low at 6 percent, in an era when that issue is soaring in importance to civic leaders themselves.

• Illegal drug use rates as a "major concern" by 38 percent, the highest health concern.

Analysts noted: "Overall, the highest rated services tended to be public safety services (e.g., fire, ambulance and police) and parks and recreation services (e.g., the golf course, Central Park, city parks).