ERNC Forms Dog Park Committee

In the latest effort to make Eagle Rock more dog-friendly, the south end of Yosemite Rec Center is proposed as the location for a dog park.

The Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council has formed a committee to look into the prospects of creating a dog park in Eagle Rock—an idea that has long been discussed in the community but has yet to be realized.

At its monthly meeting at Eagle Rock City Hall Wednesday night, the ERNC appointed four members of its board to the so-called Dog Park Committee. The members are ERNC President Michael Nogueira, Sub-District 5 Director Matt Harrington, Business Director Liam Roth and Youth Director Caroline Roncalli.
“Since I moved to Eagle Rock two years ago, the number of dogs I see on streets is ridiculous,” Harrington told the meeting, adding that he saw two dogs loose just this past Sunday.

He hoped that a neighborhood Dog Park Committee would help Eagle Rock become more dog-friendly, said Harrington, who rescued two Chihuahua mixes, a pit bull, a pit-terrier mix and a “Pomeranian boy” one morning last June while on his way to work.

Harrington proposed the unused area behind the swimming pool at the Yosemite Recreation Center, next to Eagle Rock High School, as a location for a dog park, even though, he noted, the Department of Recreation and Parks is against the creation of a dog park there.
A dog park at the south end of the Yosemite Recreation Center would not only create a “destination” but would help control the “sketchy traffic” in the vicinity, ERNC member Kerry Tribe said, referring to presence of taggers and people known to use the area for drinking and other illegal activities.
The last time the issue of creating a dog park in Eagle Rock cropped up at the Eagle Rock Neighborhood Council was in April 2012. At the time, Paul Darrigo, a volunteer at the Reserve Animal Control Officer (RACO) program, proposed that the ERNC appoint one of its board members to liaise with the city’s Department of Animal Welfare in an effort to coordinate community activities, such as periodic adoption days, aimed at helping reduce the population of lost pets in Eagle Rock. 
ERNC Civic Director Irena Seta volunteered and was appointed at the April 2012 meeting to become Eagle Rock’s Department of Animal Welfare liaison. The issue came up during the ERNC’s latest meeting on Wednesday when Mary Garson, an Eagle Rock resident in the audience, asked if anything had come of Seta’s appointment.
The April 2012 ERNC meeting was also noteworthy for a proposal that the board heard by former ERNC member Vince Antonio, a veteran of dog walks, to construct a fenced area for unleashed dogs at a relatively unused location within the Eagle Rock Recreation Center. Click here to read more about that. 
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