The use and demand for events at the Soldotna Creek Park has grown in recent years. However, Resolution 2023-014 “Adopting Updated Soldotna Creek Park Special Event Policies and Reservation Procedures” failed on a 4-2 no-vote at the Soldotna City Council Meeting.
The reservation and event use policy for Soldotna Creek Park was last updated by the City Council on April 10, 2019.
City Manager Stephanie Queen Soldotna Creek Park spoke on use permits and park usage.
“We approached this project wanting our public spaces to be safe and welcoming. We recognize that this park in particular is a public forum that accommodates a really diverse use of events within our community and we had the sense that the public and our council had wanted that public use to continue. We wanted to implement best practices when it came to developing policy and code in that language be clear, easily understood and that it be legally defensible and able to be administered by our staff.”
The Administration worked with the City Attorney to review and suggest changes to the presented version of the Soldotna Creek Booking Policy based on current use patterns, operational needs, and best practices.
Queen on procedures and language of the resolution;
“This achieves other administrative improvements that we see as process improvements and I think that’s regardless of the previous actions so I think there’s merit in moving forward with this consideration. However, I did a quick scan through the resolution and it does use the words disorderly conduct and it does use the words obscene; so I think we might need additional time to decide whether the city has sufficient definitions of those if not I would definitely come back and recommend those phrases be deleted.”
It was discussed that some language in the existing policy document and code needed to be updated to provide clear standards that are easily understood and legally defensible.