This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Salt Lake County parks and recreation officials are proposing a one-year pilot program that allows people to play with their dogs off leash at six county parks.
They are:
Canyon Rim Park, 3100 S. 3100 East
Big Cottonwood Regional Park, 4300 S. 1300 East
Mountain Man Park, 5000 S. 5200 West
Flight Park State Recreation Area at Point of the Mountain in Draper
Valley Center Park, 4013 S. 700 West
Scott Avenue Park, 3475 S. 800 East
After seeing what works and what doesn't at those sites, Recreation Director Martin Jensen said, the county would like to look at possibly integrating parks in cities valleywide into the program and developing more places where people and their dogs can play freely.
"These are everyone's parks," he told the County Council recently. "We have to meet the needs of all residents. It's amazing the amount of diversity we see in the parks."
But, he acknowledged, "not everyone is as enthusiastic about dogs as others."
As evidence, numerous neighbors from around Scott Avenue Park later voiced their objections to its inclusion on the list.
"It would be a crime to allow dogs to go in there and disturb the birds and the nests. This is just a horrible, horrible plan," said Robert Breeze, who lives on Scott Avenue. "The parks department people [justify it], saying people go there with dogs already. But this is rewarding lawbreakers."
"My fear is this mixed use, while compelling, won't work in such a tiny park," added Megan Newhouse.
Don Garcia, who said he has been taking his special- needs daughter to the park for 18 years, observed that he considers Scott Park "a place for meditation, but not when dogs come and disrupt that. … I would like it to remain pristine as it is."
Still, the idea of more off-leash dog parks also attracted plenty of supporters.
Linda Gregersen, a Murray woman with a dog-walking and pet-sitting business, presented a petition with signatures of 1,300 people who support more off-leash dog parks in the Salt Lake Valley.
"A well-exercised dog is definitely a better-behaved dog," she said. "Perhaps Scott Avenue isn't the best place, but there are many parks that could be used for this. Many people who signed the petition would be willing to take care of a park in their area."
Lynne Gilbert-Norton, an animal-behavior consultant and trainer, offered to "design these parks to stop a lot of the fights [between dogs] and a lot of the negative behavior."
Added Polly Hart of the dog-advocacy group Millcreek Fidos, "The dog-walking community is pretty tight, and we don't like the vicious animals either." She lobbied for off-leash areas to be spread out in multiple neighborhoods.
Jensen said the off-leash pilot program follows up on a master plan the county developed on dog parks just as the recession hit and "Salt Lake County resources went to places other than dog parks."
With that crisis over, Jensen and his colleagues turned back to finding suitable locations for off-leash parks. They looked for areas without existing programming because the county did not want to displace any current users, he said. They had to have the right shapes and had to be attracting dog owners already.
In some places, such as Valley Center Park, Jensen said, enticing more law-abiding people to the area to play with their dogs was seen as a way of keeping away more undesirable elements.
That's partly why Amanda Moore was so high on the idea of making a wooded gully in Canyon Rim Park into an off-leash dog zone. "The gully is kind of dangerous," she said. "If there were dog users, there wouldn't be as many guys down there smoking joints or whatever they do."
County Animal Services Director Mike Reberg said he likes the parks selected for the pilot project because they are geographically contained and easily can be provided with signs to let everyone know they are parks where dogs run loose.
"It is clear we need more off-leash opportunities in all the jurisdictions we work in. It's happening anyway," he said. "If we can create more opportunities where it's legal and people can make decisions based on that opportunity and not sneak around, it creates far less enforcement conflicts."
Once the council approves the program, Jensen said he could have the required signs up in four to eight weeks. Then he would launch the public-input process to see what people like and dislike before trying to expand the program.
Council Chairman Richard Snelgrove asked for three weeks to visit the proposed sites, noting that firsthand views would be valuable, given the amount of "constituent correspondence" he has received.
"For me," Snelgrove said, "it's more about the people than the dogs." While some owners need their dogs as exercise partners, he added, "for others, it's a matter of companionship. A dog is a member of the family. It's loved. For some people, it's the only living creature they truly love or are reciprocally loved by."
The issue is expected to come back to the council July 14.