We need your help!  Take 3 hours out of your weekend to help honor the earth and lend a hand at your community park.  FROG will be organizing a fun family-friendly clean-up this April 17th from 9am – 12noon, as part of the City of Oakland Earth Day clean up.

Please bring work gloves, and gardening tools, rake or gardening fork, if you have one. Projects include playground
cleaning, weeding, planting, turning fibar, sweeping, and clearing the pond and creek bed (ready for the faux creek to flow).  Hope to see you there!

See www.oaklandearthday.com for more information.  Contact Howard Ferrier at hwferrier@sbcglobal.net with any questions.

Perhaps you can help plan new landscaping, or monitor construction of the new bathroom coming this year …. maybe help with our database to assist with volunteer recruitment and communications, or be part of planning the fall maintenance day. Whatever your interest and skills, we have ways for you to get involved, and new ideas are always welcome.

Join us on Thursday, the 20th of April, and bring your friends and family. If you can’t attend, send an email to info@frogpark.org and tell us what you’re interested in … one of the FROG Committee members will get back to you right away.

Activities will include the use of a rig-mounted boring device to drill into the ground, placing steel and concrete grout to fill the opening, and the placement of a steel beam for testing. Work hours are 7:00 am – 7:00 pm, Monday through Saturday, with emergency work as necessary.

The work will take place in phases, and notifications will be distributed in advance of future phases. In total, there are three columns in the park and three columns bordering the park on the neighboring streets, all requiring footing retrofits. Work will begin in the northern basketball court. Noise mitigation measures will be taken by the contractor to minimize impacts to park users. The total duration of all work is approximately one year.

Construction is in progress in the Basketball Court in Hardy Park. Beginning mid January, the BART Earthquake Safety Program will establish a work zone on the opposite side of the Dog Park on Claremont Avenue.

Please note that there will be a temporary reduction of parking on a portion of Claremont Avenue and traffic lanes on Claremont Avenue will be shifted west approaching Hudson Street. In addition, there will be some sidewalk closures and while the Dog Park will remain open, the only access point will be through the Claremont Avenue entrance.

Please see the attached notification for specific details regarding the work. Please contact Sharla Sullivan: SSulliv@bart.gov and info@frogpark.org with any questions or concerns.

WE NEED YOUR HELP! Join your neighbors and friends to sweep, rake, paint, refill the wood chip cushioning, clear, and replant at the annual Fall Maintenance Day at FROG Park.

All adults and kids over the age of 13 (with parental supervision) are invited – there’s something for everyone to do.

Come to either the Hardy or Redondo playgrounds, and bring your own trowel, pruners, small garden tools, and work gloves, if possible. We’ll also maintain the existing structure and new Kiosk. FROG will provide cold drinks and snacks for all volunteers.

Visit the FROG website at www.frogpark.org for more details, or contact Howard Ferrier at info@frogpark.org. Come out for a few hours or the entire day – we’ve got lots to do this year!

More than 100 volunteers celebrate their work at the Hardy play area, October 2001.

FROG and RCPC (Rockridge Community Planning Council) have each written to City Council President and District One councilmember Jane Brunner protesting City plans to curtail maintenance of FROG Park. The proposal is part of the draft 2009-10 fiscal year budget, which attempts to address an $80 million budget shortfall.

The proposed budget calls for no maintenance at the Hardy Park play structures and swings, the Redondo Park play structure, the grassy areas of FROG Park, as well as the basketball courts and the dog park. Only the pathway from Clifton Street to Cavour Street would be maintained, because of recent capital improvements there.

FROG and RCPC’s letters points out that FROG Park has benefited from over $2 million dollars in capital improvements, as well as thousands of hours of volunteer efforts, and the loss of maintenance could put all of that at risk.

The letter notes that park deterioration could lead to a resurgence of rodent problems at the park, converting it from a community asset to a public nuisance.

Finally, the letter requests that the City not lay off the park’s only maintenance worker, Clinton Pugh, whose outstanding efforts led to his being named “employee of the year” two years ago.

The City has held two public budget workshops, May 28 and June 1, where RCPC reiterated its concerns. An official public hearing on the proposed budget will be held June 16 at City Hall, with final adoption slated for June 30.

As always with controversial Council decisions, expressions of public concern are influential. Express your feelings about FROG Park at the June 16 public meeting or write a letter to Councilmember Jane Brunner. The full FROG letter is available here and the RCPC letter is available here.

We have tasks for a single day and longer-term projects to help take care of our park. Scan the list and see if there’s something you’d like to get involved with, from planting to creek clean-up to computer work. Please contact info@frogpark.org if you’d like more information.

• Public Art: the concrete elements will soon be fitted with telescopes and interesting objects to be viewed, as part of bringing you more information about the creek and the history of the area.

• The BART Retrofit moves into the Park this fall. Three BART columns will be retrofitted, and part of the basketball court will be torn up and restored to its recently-renovated state after construction. For more information on this, please contact Catherine Westphall, BART Earthquake Safety Program, Community Relations Manager, 510-464-7595, CWestph@bart.gov

• Landscaping enhancements will happen at Fall Maintenance Day, and if there is interest, perhaps this summer as well. If you enjoy plants, this is a great way to get involved for a day of planting or more long-term planning. There is a new source for donated native plants that may be helpful. City staff will look into the situation with the eucalyptus – the leaves and bark clog the creek gratings, and make it almost impossible to grow anything beneath those trees.

• Clearing the creek gratings is a continuous task. Between discarded toys, trash, and leaves and sticks that fall into the creek, the small creek gratings are easily clogged and can back up. Volunteers are needed to periodically heck the creek gratings and remove obstructions.

• Volunteers are welcome and needed with many other skills, including communications and recruitment. If you’re interested in helping with something that you can do from home via computer or phone, this may be for you – contact info@frogpark.org.

• 51^st and Telegraph extensions to the park’s pathway and recognition of the creek are now part of the agreements with the two developers. Given the current economic climate, we don’t know when these projects will move forward, but whatever is built will include an extension.

• The legal settlement of CalTrans with the 4^th Bore Coalition includes a new debris barrier along highway 24 above the park. This will prevent debris from falling from the freeway onto park users at the swings and green space. We’re awaiting details from CalTrans about design and timing.

During the hard work that morning, we enjoyed wonderful snacks donated by: Trader Joe’s Rockridge, Bakesale Betty’s, Safeway on College, Noah’s Bagels, Starbucks, and Clif Bar, as well as donations from Councilmember Jane Brunner and the Office of Public Works.

We filled more than 50 bags, mostly with green waste but also some trash. Thanks to Parks Maintenance staff Clinton Pugh, Will Patterson and Frank Foster, who brought us supplies and took the bags for composting afterward.

We are grateful to Jennifer Cooper, Howard Ferrier and Ronnie Spitzer who coordinated this clean-up, and to everyone who took time to be part of Earth Day and take care of our park in Rockridge.

Hardy and Redondo playgrounds are focal points for children and families. Walkers stroll the connecting greenbelt path, which is fully accessible for the disabled.

Park features:

• Play structures and sand boxes at Hardy & Redondo parks (see map)
• Swings, tire and individual
• Picnic areas, both seating areas and grass
• ADA accessible play elements
• Fence and gate along major streets
• Faux Temescal Creek May-October for water play

Young and old joined together to sweep, collect trash, weed, and spruce up our well-loved park. In just two hours, we collected 14 bags of garbage and compostable matter. View all pictures here.