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Surprised committee members appeared slightly bewildered when
Parks staff running a June 22 meeting twice interrupted members in
mid-sentence and insisted that they not use the words "plastic" or
"artificial" when describing the proposed fake grass for the Loyal
Heights Playfield project. Staff chided the committee members for the
use of such language, directing them instead to use the word
"synthetic."

The third and final meeting of the "Project Advisory Team" concluded
the neighborhood-based "community outreach" by the Parks
department. (With outreach like this, who needs "in-reach?")

The three meetings of the committee were often tense and
contentious. Parks staff started off the first meeting by asserting that
discussion about the turf would not be allowed.

At the first meeting, Parks issued a "memo" to committee members
(click here to read all about it), urging members to adopt memo talking
point as their own. (The memo attacked this website point-by-point and
by name. Sometimes government entities adopt an "above-the-fray"
approach; not so with the Parks department, who demonstrated a
street-savvy willingness to mix it up head-on with the nay-sayers.)
After the presentation of the memo, staff went on to say that any
further discussion of the turf issue would be outside the scope of the
committee work.