The Los Osos Community Services District wants to reopen an old wound and address the dearth of community parks in town, and try and answer a myriad of questions that must be addressed if this “park deficit” is ever going to be shrunk.
LOCSD Director, Matthew Fourcroy, and Executive Director Ron Munds sat down with Estero Bay News in an attempt to raise public awareness about an issue that Los Ososans have decried for decades, why does the County’s biggest unincorporated community have only one park?
Granted, the Community Park is very nice, with a community center, playground, grassy area, picnic facilities, a skate park and the Red Barn, plus tennis courts. But for a town with over 14,000 people, Los Osos falls far short of what is considered a standard amount of parklands per capita.
“We have 6.2 acres of parks,” Fourcroy explained, “and should have 43 acres for our size.” He added that’s based on a formula of an acre for every 1,000 residents.
It should be noted that Los Osos also has a lot of “open space,” which while not the kind of parks Fourcroy would like to see, has always been included in the calculus of park space by SLO County.
Among the beautiful wild areas are the Greenbelt (mainly east of the middle school), the Elfin Forest, Sweet Springs Nature Preserve, Los Osos Oaks State Park, and the biggest one of all — Montaña de Oro State Park.
Fourcroy and Munds both said the over 10,000-acre Montaña de Oro is listed in the recently approved Los Osos Community Plan, as Los Osos park land.
So while Los Osos has many beautiful locations where a person could get lost in nature, finding someplace where your child’s first birthday party or grandma’s 80th could be held, you’re back to one choice.
Also, the town is filled with children who have recreational needs, in particular baseball, softball and soccer fields.
Munds said the schools have always filled that need and by chance, there’s an opportunity on the close horizon with the long closed Sunnyside School.
“Sunnyside,” Munds said, “is 13 acres and it’s for sale by the school district right now.” He added that the district did an appraisal, but it hasn’t been made public yet.
He also said there will probably be developers interested in the site on Los Osos Valley Road at Palisades Avenue. But Sunnyside is across the street from the Community Park and even if it were to become a public park, folks across town might not get many benefits.
That may be, but Fourcroy pointed out that the state park gets over 700,000 visitors a year and access to it could be changing soon.
He noted an article from Estero Bay News published last April, after County Supervisors approved a new lease with State Parks for Cayucos beach, pier and vet’s hall, cutting out the Morro Bay Golf Course lease and clearing the way for the State to put in an entrance kiosk and charge a day use fee.
That’s something the State has wanted to do for over 25 years, as back in the 1990s, the State started charging day use fees at just about every other state park in California. Indeed, Montaña de Oro is one of the few state parks that has free admission.
Putting in the entrance kiosk has always been talked about in conjunction with making some sort of arrangement where frequent park users including Los Osos residents could buy an annual pass and use it as often as they wish.
With Hazards and Plastics (the Sandspit Day Use Area), being two of the more popular local surf spots, wave riders would be impacted by a day use fees, as well.
Munds and Fourcroy predicted that the golf course lease (and in turn the project for the entrance kiosk) could go before the Board of Supervisors in August, as the second half of the previous contract amendment that dealt with the Cayucos facilities.
Fourcroy said despite the park getting so many visitors a year, it doesn’t much benefit Los Osos from an economic standpoint, as the town seems to get the traffic but the shops and restaurants don’t see many more patrons.
He added that the CSD’s fire department is the first responder to emergencies in the state park; and though the State does reimburse the CSD, it doesn’t cover all the costs.
“We pay for a paramedic fire department,” he explained, “ and we get back-funded at less than that.”
So what types of parks are they looking for — active recreation (like the Community Park), or passive use (like Sweet Springs Preserve or the Elfin Forest)?
“We need all of it,” Fourcroy said. He added that when the CSD started looking at building an off-leash dog park, “there was tons of support. The pickleball players are looking for courts, the tennis players want more courts, and we need playgrounds and sports fields.”
Indeed, that proposed dog park, to be located at the north end of the Community Park and adjacent to the tennis courts, is still included in the Community Park’s Master Plan. There’s also some space next to that where pickleball courts could possibly be built.
Munds said the CSD’s parks and recreation subcommittee, which Fourcroy chairs, has been working on this for some time and has brought in park users to start the ball rolling.
And at the CSD’s Aug. 1 meeting, they plan to hold a discussion on the issue. Fourcroy and Munds are asking folks to turn out (or comment online), and let the board know if they want more parks.
The CSD has some money stashed away that’s left over from an effort the community undertook back in the 1990s to build a community pool.
About half of the money that was raised in that effort (about $300,000) was given to the Morro Bay Recreation Department to ensure Los Osos residents would not be charged an out-of-town extra fee to take the various swimming programs the City runs at the new high school pool in conjunction with the San Luis Coastal Unified School District.
In actuality, both Morro Bay and Los Osos are within the same school district and so share the costs of the bonds from Measure D in 2014 that has rebuilt both Morro Bay and SLO High Schools.
The school district also passed another bond to address its middle schools, and Los Osos Middle School is eventually getting new sports fields.
The CSD has still got around $300,000 of that pool money, Munds said, within the CSD’s coffers. And while they’ve dipped into it a couple of times for what could be considered park uses, they’ve been able to backfill the account so it’s still got around $300,000.
That money might come in handy as the idea of more parks travels down the bureaucratic brick road — from a community wish, to a study and plan, and eventually to construction, which is likely to take a whole lot more money. But they’ve got to start, or perhaps re-start, somewhere.
“Basically,” Fourcroy said, “it’s a ‘needs assessment.’ What do you want? What are you willing to pay?”
Both agree that Los Osos probably isn’t going to get more parks without having some kind of funding mechanism in place for ongoing maintenance. That’s an issue the County Parks has wrestled with in Cayucos with Norma Rose Park, which has been fully planned and funded through construction, but the County has resisted because of a lack of maintenance money. So Norma Rose Park, which does have a small dog park, sits unrealized.
Munds said they could either activate the CSD’s parks and rec powers, or contract with the County Parks Department, giving them funding to support new parks here. That’s a question to be answered later.
However, the CSD, many years ago, tried to get an assessment passed by voters that would have activated the “parks and recreation” powers of a CSD, and it failed. (That failure was also one of the reasons the old pool committee donated to the Morro Bay Rec Department, to put Los Ososans on an even level with Morro Bay residents on recreational swimming programs.)
Munds said back then the town was warily looking at a future sewer assessment and wasn’t interested in even more taxes. But with that sewer project now completed, and the ball rolling towards the eventual lifting of the town’s building moratorium, the parks deficit is probably going to grow larger.
Ordinarily, a community gets parklands as a mitigation measure for large developments and subdivisions, which are normally required to donate land for parks as part of their subdivision maps. Or they could pay an in-lieu fee. it’s part of the cost of doing business.
Los Osos has one 98-lot subdivision — 97 home sites and one drainage basin lot — currently being pursued that’s adjacent to Sea Pines Golf Course.
They added that one other opportunity has arisen — Cuesta Inlet is for sale as well. Cuesta Inlet is a small tidal inlet where people launch canoes and kayaks to explore the Back Bay. It’s private property and people using the inlet to essentially store a boat for later use, has been a problem for several years. About one-and-a-half years ago, the Inlet was put up for sale.
A non-profit group, Save Cuesta Inlet (see: savecuestainlet.org) was formed, and is raising money to buy and to preserve the inlet and the boat launch.
As of last June (2023), according to the website, they had raised some $180,000. But the Inlet was appraised at $720,000, so they’ve a ways to go. The asking price is $1 million.
And so the drive to get more park space in Los Osos is starting anew with the CSD discussion on Aug. 1, and folks interested in working on this are encouraged to attend or comment in writing, to let their feelings be known, and, if the almighty community sewer beast can be defeated, maybe this can too.
