Let's focus on the issues at hand.
The idea is to come to a point where everyone gets something, maybe even most of what they want. An extreme solution - either removal of park lighting or doing nothing - is not going to be acceptable. The issue has always been unilateral modifications to the Park and a "Mr. Wizard" approach to its management (let's do this or that and see what happens). These "experiments" sometimes resulted in considerable controversy and other failures. MPWNA is trying to foster a dialog among the neighbors, Park users and the Parks and Recreation Department that will prevent bad decisions from being made - ones that detract from the value of the Park to the people who use it, adversely affect the people living near Park or the neighborhood, or all of the above.
One of the problems is that a lot of assumptions are being made without any understanding about the facts or the history. Many of the folks living next to the Park bought their houses when it was still a school property. When it was made a park, the City said it was designed to be a neighborhood park; not a regional park complete with rest rooms and parking lots - a draw for people from all over the area and venue for City sponsored sports leagues, like Clark, Daley and Jaycee parks. If you look at the designs of those parks, there are either large buffers between heavily lit areas and adjacent houses, or lighting that is directed away from housing. That's not at all what happened here.
There are other things we need to know, like: What are the lighting standards for various types parks and spaces withing parks? How do other cities design and manage park lights to minimize costs of operation, glare, sky-glow and light tresspass? The manual on-off switch is one of many options.
The ulitmate question (not to life, the universe and everything, but for this issue) is what can we do that makes the Park a more friendly environment and encourage its use in such a way that the Park is of both of value to the City and the neighborhood and does not create serious adverse impacts; like 8,000 Watts of light shining directly from the bulbs into someone's windows. So, if you are going to go to the meeting on Wed., bring, first, the willingness to listen and learn and, second, ideas on how to keep the lights on the basketball court and not everywhere else they are not supposed to be shining. Then, everybody can win.
