If you drive past Crane Park on the weekends, you may notice a few bounce houses set up in the designated rentable areas of the park. While it may seem harmless to most community members driving by or passing through the park, neighbors of the area have filed several complaints to the City of Turlock regarding the noise created by the generators running the bounce houses.
City Staff will be working with Lt. Miguel Pacheco to come up with a plan to minimize the noise created from the bounce houses. Erik Schulze, the Parks, Recreation and Public Facilities Superintendent for the City, said that one solution on the City’s end is to have staff work on better communication for the bounce house set ups with the renters at the park.
“Hopefully by January we’ll have something to bring the noise done, and control the vendors,” stated Schulze. “We do have staff that are out there currently, and we’ll work to make sure they’re better informed on what they need to do and have them trained on how to confront people who might be breaking any regulations.”
Bounce houses are currently permitted at parks throughout the City that contain rented spaces, such as Crane Park, Columbia Park, and Pedretti Park. At Crane Park, there are currently seven rentable spaces within the proximity. Commissioner Steven Nascimento suggested that perhaps the City could change the amount of rentable spaces at Crane Park that allow bounce houses to be permitted.
Crane Park neighbor and Turlock resident Stan Grant brought up the issue of Crane Park being designated as a Community Park, rather than just a neighborhood park.
“It occurred to me recently, there was a transition time from when Crane Park didn’t have any issues, it was fairly benign,” stated Grant. Grant also brought attention to the Walk Your Paws for Bella’s Cause event, a fundraiser event for a local 5 year old girl who received a kidney transplant from her father that was held at Crane Park last month, stating that he was awoken to the sound of barking dogs and event coordinators testing their sound system.
While Grant stated that it might have been a “worthwhile enterprise”, he still put an emphasis on the fact that Crane Park should be a designated Neighborhood Park as opposed to a Community Park.
Commissioner Mike Dowd stated that Crane Park was usually an ideal location for such events, as it is one of the few city parks to house a public restroom. He also suggested that perhaps the City needed to look at other community parks to add restrooms to as a means to alleviate some of the problems and complaints at Crane Park.
“Maybe we need to look at a solution for the long term,” stated Dowd.
For those interested in the issue, or to participate in adding suggestions to help alleviate the issue, there will be a public meeting held at the Parks and Recreation Office at 154 S. Broadway in Turlock, on October 30th, at 6pm. The meeting has been changed once and is subject to change again.
