Oliver Moore and Jim Mckellepp get ready to fly a model airplane at South St. Paul’s Kaposia Landing. The city park will be closed for upgrades this summer and RC activity has recently been banned from the city’s entire parks system.
Patrick Moore has been flying remote-controlled model planes at Kaposia Landing in South St. Paul with his 10-year-old son, Oliver, since the boy took an interest in the activity last spring.
Moore, the self-proclaimed “pit crew” of the duo, said they spent nearly five nights a week at the park located on the banks of the Mississippi River that summer as a core group of regulars — about a dozen of them — took the two under their wing and taught them not only the mechanics of flying, but about the history of the model war planes as well.
So when a fellow enthusiast alerted him to the fact that the City Council was preparing to enact an ordinance banning the use of RC aircraft and watercraft in the city’s parks system, this St. Paul resident showed up at the meeting on April 20 wearing a white T-shirt featuring a print of a Warhawk World War II plane and the text “Dog park flyers” — the name of the informal club, named after the proximity of their favorite flying spot to another prominent feature at Kaposia Landing.
“I just think we all feel like we were blindsided by this,” Moore told the council with eight other flyers standing behind him at the podium. “We were out there every night. Nobody’s ever notified us of any complaints or concerns and, quite frankly ... there’s a lot of interest from veterans to small children that come and look at the planes.”
The group conceded that they knew their opportunity to fly at Kaposia Landing was limited, since the park’s open spaces had long been slated for development, but they objected to the apparent lack of communication as the city compiled complaints against RC aircraft activity and set an expiration date so construction could begin this summer.
After listening to pleas to delay the new ordinance, which came recommended by the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission, the council unanimously settled on a compromise. The new ordinance won’t go into effect until June 1 or when the construction at Kaposia Landing begins, whichever comes first.
“I know that it’s probably difficult for some of you to hear, but I hope you continue to look for other options, whether it’s here in Dakota County or nearby in Washington County,” councilman Todd Podgarski said before the motion passed. “I know change can be hard for some people, but it is time for a change.”
A temporary luxury
Podgarski’s father belonged to the initial group of RC aircraft hobbyists that began frequenting the south end of Kaposia Landing years ago.
“He enjoyed his time down there flying the model airplanes,” Podgarski said, noting his father no longer lives in South St. Paul. “He’s got friends that do it and I’m sure some of his friends that fly might not be too happy with me supporting that we need to stop having the airplanes fly down there. But with the new parks master plan, with the referendum passing, I think it is appropriate.”
Back when plans to develop Kaposia Landing lacked funding and approval, a number of RC pilots — including Podgarski’s father — approached Chris Esser, the city’s parks and recreation director, to see if they could temporarily take advantage of vacant airfield. Esser said they decided to give it a try.
“Fast forward to about two years ago, we started getting escalating concerns and comments from both the public and our police department,” he said at the first reading of the new ordinance at the April 6 council meeting. “All of a sudden, a few enthusiasts [had] turned into sometimes 20, plus, at a time.”
Esser explained that the confluence of two main factors — a growing list of complaints from other park users and neighboring residents, along with preparations to fully develop the park with baseball fields and a picnic structure — prompted the Parks and Recreation Commission to reevaluate the informal agreement.
In a follow up interview, Esser said the city has received notices that model planes have swooped down close to trail users and their dogs. Additionally, there’s concern that a mishandled RC aircraft could cause injuries or damage by colliding into people or vehicles nearby. Over the course of two years, the commission ultimately determined that an RC airfield was no longer an appropriate fit because it requires more real estate than the city’s urban parks system can offer.
“It’s kind of tough to take something away and not say, ‘You can go somewhere else,’ or ‘We’re going to find you a better option to do that.’ But with remote-controlled aircraft, it just doesn’t seem to be possible,” Esser said, adding the commission had decided to include RC watercraft activity in the ban as well.
A friendly amendment
Prior to the second reading of the new ordinance banning RC aircraft activity in the city’s parks system, residents listened to the council vote in favor of a conditional use permit for the construction of a new archery range at 405 Kaposia Boulevard.
Reluctant to tell his son to set down his remote control as others are allowed to pick up their bows and arrows inside city limits, Moore expressed further frustration in a follow up interview.
“All the pros I heard about an archery range ring similarly true,” he said of his preferred hobby.
Noting the cost of arrows was listed as added insurance that shooters would keep their aiming under control, Moore explained the same logic should apply to RC aircraft operators.
“These planes are very expensive. We’re not going to go fly them into cars, or fly them into birds,” he said, noting he and his son have purchased and maintained 22 different model planes all of which ranged in price from $100-$400, depending on the size, style and inclusion of special features like retractable landing gear.
Making a final plea before the council on April 20, he requested that a set of safety rules be established to allow RC flyers to continue flying, rather than banning the activity altogether.
“I understand the concerns with safety. We use the park quite a bit,” he told the council at the last meeting. “[But] there are all kinds of safety concerns with dogs and bike riders sharing pedestrian lances. There’s always safety concerns with any activities you do in a park.”
While none of the council members were willing to retract the ordinance, councilwoman Lori Hansen seemed to be the most willing to sympathize with their situation.
“I would agree with you that there really is a lot of interest and it’s fun to watch the planes fly,” she said. “However, the park is being developed in a manner that isn’t going to allow planes to be flown in that area.”
After some contentious back-and-forth commentary on the plausibility of revisiting or postponing the ban — primarily between another hobbyist and councilman Tom Seaberg — Hansen proposed a friendly amendment to the ordinance, granting RC pilots a few more weeks to pursue a new location and enjoy a few last outings with their model planes at Kaposia Landing.
Before the motion passed, Mayor Beth Baumann reassured the hobbyists who had come to the meeting that it likely wasn’t any of them who were causing issues at the makeshift airfield.
“Communication could have been better,” she added. “I guess we didn’t realize you guys didn’t know about it.”
Various councilmembers encouraged RC operators to seek out other airfields in Dakota County. Perhaps one of the nearest options — a model airfield at Spring Lake Park Reserve in Hastings — is currently being relocated as construction along the Mississippi River Regional Trail will occupy the space for quite some time.
According to Beth Landahl, spokeswoman for the Dakota County Parks Department, enthusiasts may have to expand their search.
“There’s no plan, at this point, to relocate the model airplane flying field in any of the Dakota County parks properties,” she said.
For hobbyists like Moore, the new commute poses new challenges. But the real tragedy, he said, is the threat of losing the camaraderie he and his son came to cherish at Kaposia Landing.
“It’s pretty fresh, still, to figure out where we’re gonna go,” he said. “My fear [is] that people will branch out and find different places.”
Original article can be found here: http://eastsidereviewnews.com
Oliver Moore, 10, holds one of the 22 model airplanes in his collection that he enjoys flying at Kaposia Landing in South St. Paul.
No comments:
Post a Comment