Dog park debate ‘needs to stop’
Collierville in control
Collierville Board of Mayor and Aldermen meetings are often routine affairs, but Monday night’s was anything but routine as the latest chapter played out in the contentious debate over an off-leash dog area in W.C. Johnson Park.
The meeting pitted volunteers of Collierville Animal Services in red shirts against white- shirted backers of a 5.5-acre dog park at W.C. Johnson. Aldermen disagreed. Police chief Larry Goodwin dashed into the foyer to see if there was a gun in a holster on a man’s waist. One alderwoman even called out resident Chris Cornell, a lead backer of the Johnson Park proposal, for allegedly spreading lies and defamatory statements about the alderwoman and her family. Cornell shouted back from the audience, and Mayor Stan Joyner threatened to have Cornell removed.
Cornell has spent months inundating town staff with public records requests for hundreds of documents dealing with parks, personnel and other issues. He has studied dog parks nationwide, trying to design one for Collierville using best practices. He wants the park built near his house. He would not be happy with it being built anywhere else in the park, he said Monday.
The path to Monday night’s tumultuous meeting, and the less-thancrystal- clear action that came from it, traces back to May 29, when aldermen approved 3-2 a proposal by Cornell for the dog park in a picturesque, unused area of the city’s largest park. Cornell created a list of amenities he wanted included in the dog park, and the board agreed but stipulated that Cornell must create a nonprofit group to oversee development and management of the dog park. Cornell came back to the board at a later meeting, asking for them to approve a memorandum of understanding that would leave all his plans for the design of the park in place but remove the requirement for a nonprofit organization to manage the park.
Aldermen Maureen Fraser proposed the board rescind approval of the entire project and hand it to Collierville staff to design and implement a plan. That motion was approved 3-2, but a procedural error caused the action to be nullified and placed back on the agenda Monday night.
The final vote Monday was for the board to remove Cornell’s obligation for the nonprofit organization, and it passed by a 4-1 margin. The town would take over development and management of the park, which means there will be citizen input and staff designs. Whether that affects size and location is unclear.
But amid Monday night’s kerfuff le, one speaker attempted to provide some perspective.
“First, I don’t give a rip whether we have a dog park or not,” Chuck Lesnick said. “I love dogs, we have three and exercise them regularly.
“But this issue has gotten way too complicated and is taking up too much time when we have a huge issue facing us. We need to be laser-focused on the municipal school system. There are people in Memphis that want to stop us and accuse us of motivations that aren’t true. Everyone has globbed onto this dog park, and it needs to stop.”