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09/20/02 Ravenna Creek needs your help - today. RCA asks you to contact the Parks Board directly, before they meet on Sept. 26 to discuss Ravenna's alternatives and to make their recommendation to Supt. Bounds. Email is the simplest method. Send a message via sandy.brooks@seattle.gov; please copy RCA at ravennacreek@earthlink.net. The message is straightforward: "Please recommend Alt. 5 to Supt. Ken Bounds as your preferred alternative for daylighting Ravenna Creek in Ravenna Park." Alternative 5 is RCA's name for the option which preserves the best options for creek daylighting and overall park design opportunities. Alternative 5 allows the creek and a modified soccer field to share the creek's watershed in the south end of Ravenna Park. It combines the lefthand side of the Parks Dept.'s Alternative 2 with the righthand side of Alternative 3. It eliminates the baseball field that currently occupies the creek's watercourse both from the south end of Ravenna Park and from within Cowen Park. The baseball field needs a new home. Eliminating the baseball field for the sake of the creek was first proposed by the Parks Dept., at a meeting in June of 2001 where three conceptual options were discussed. The first Parks design workshop in March of this year made it clear that the Creek was much better off without the baseball field in the same space. Alternative 5 has been endorsed by the Ravenna Bryant Community Association, the Laurelhurst Community Club, the Seattle Audubon Society and a score of speakers who testified eloquently at the Sept. 12 Parks Board hearing on behalf of Alt. 5. Alternative 5 is available in graphic form on the RCA website at http://home.earthlink.net/~ravennacreek/Publications/Alt5. jpg Alts. 1-4 can be seen on the Parks project website at: http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/proparks/projects/raven nacreekatravenna. htm. For the Creek's sake and for the sake of the Slough and Union Bay, we need wide riparian buffers and a long meandering channel in Ravenna Park. This can only be done in the absence of a baseball field. Sharing the small space available with a baseball field produces the predominantly ditch-like Alt. 2, the preferred alternative presented by Parks staff. Alt. 5 is cheaper by $400-500,000 than Parks' preferred Alt. 2. For other ways to communicate with the Parks Board, please see the Parks Board website at: http://www.cityofseattle.net/parks/parkboard/comments2.htm. Thank you! Kit O'Neill
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