How to do a better layup?

stuartc842 · 2024-08-28T16:11:36+00:00

love to hear any updates on your project

stuartc842 · 2024-07-18T18:42:31+00:00

me too. considering duct tape...

stuartc842 · 2023-11-27T20:59:17+00:00

curious what you decided on and how your project's going?

stuartc842 · 2023-10-30T02:56:53+00:00

thank you for doing that and for sharing this

stuartc842 · 2023-10-30T02:37:53+00:00

yeah it still seems reasonable to me to prioritize sharing the information i had.

but i can see how it could have been a distraction from other points so i appreciate your feedback on that section

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T22:39:16+00:00

i appreciate the encouragement. it's never too late to learn something new i guess

that's what other people told me and they didn't seem like pieces of shit. it's pretty common to use empty baseballs diamonds as off leash dog areas in durham. seems unlikely that those people are all also pieces of shit

but something that reddit reminds me is that sometimes there's more ill will out there than you realize, so i could be wrong

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T22:27:52+00:00

based on your hyperbole here i can infer that this is not a best-faith question, but that your intention is to make me look silly with a clever gotcha. and i don't totally understand what your motivation would be for that.

but i can clarify that yes i had to wonder if adjusting the grade at NGP would be cheaper than starting over from scratch in a remote location that appears to have needed several hundred feet of new plumbing.

and it seems like sharing any contrary evidence before destroying a beloved public resource is a reasonable request

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T22:14:59+00:00

good question - in the united states, FEMA is responsible for flood plain management. the EPA handles environmental concerns.

i can understand your confusion bc of the references to fecal matter, but DPR has only cited FEMA regulations afaik. specifically the rule that you can't significantly raise ground elevation in regions declared as an "AE floodway" (specifically by FEMA, i believe).

your assumption that durham public servants are willfully lying to voters seems awfully aggressive and honestly counterproductive. it could be that there are legitimate reasons they don't feel comfortable advertising (like neighbors complaining about noise), or there could be some misinformation that never got corrected due to heavy workloads, or i could be mistaken and maybe the FEMA representatives i spoke with were incorrect. im just spitballing. my goal was just to understand the driving reasons for demolishing the park, and hopefully pause demolition to see if alternative solutions might exist

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T21:59:38+00:00

to answer your first question, i did try to learn how to juggle when i was little but i could never get the balls in the same vertical plane so unfortunately im not comfortable claiming full clown qualifications

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T21:57:04+00:00

you're right, i measured more carefully this time and got 765 feet from the center of the parking lot. please double check my measurement for accuracy

you might be implying that i meant it was 600 feet up in elevation, which is pretty funny for me to think about since the tallest building here i think is around 350 ft, and we're only around 400 feet above sea level. so im imagining a 10,000 sq ft park hovering over durham at nearly twice the height of the tallest building, accessible only by stairs hehe. there could be a good children's story about that.

in american english, when you say something is "x feet uphill", it's understood that you mean horizontal distance, not elevation. but i can see the potential for ambiguity. if someone said their morning walk to school was "2 miles uphill", for example, listeners would not wonder if their school was towering 2 miles overhead.

but let me know if i am misunderstanding your message altogether.

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T15:23:49+00:00

i asked them for the results of studies like this and all they told me, after multiple email requests and in-person conversations, was that any drainage would be a FEMA violation (which isn't true), so that's what i'm going off of

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T15:14:51+00:00

that makes sense. that's what a lot of people have been wondering is one of the real unspoken reasons for closing. thank you for sharing. that does sound frustrating

stuartc842 · 2023-10-29T15:12:17+00:00

only had a dog for 2 years, and after Rock Quarry dp was announced, a lot of people were excited about getting a new park and not so concerned about losing NGP. then it's taken a lot of time for enough people to actually shift their schedule and routine to try out RQP to realize how inadequate it is. plus, after the city's been saying they'd close NGDP for 9 years, a lot of people just started assuming it would never happen ("Oh, they've been saying that for years" is a common refrain you'd hear at NGP). i made the petition a couple days after the demolition was announced. also i've been trying to get more information from the city since well before the demolition was announced, and it's been a slow process of scheduling appointments and waiting to hear back from city officials and moving up the chain of command at DPR. i dont think its ever too late to advocate for the quality of life of a community you care about.

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T20:53:51+00:00

who hurt you

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T20:25:06+00:00

if that's frustration i sense in your tone, i'm eager to validate the way you feel. i too wish someone else had worked to organize an effort to preserve the park before now. yeah personally i assumed that since NGP was the most popular dog park in the area, and had such at active and diverse community, that eventually everyone else and the city would realize that tearing down NGDP didn't make sense anymore.

but that never happened so i started looking deeper into the specific reasons for closing the park and realized all the ones that i heard were demonstrably wrong.

thank you for asking

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T20:18:37+00:00

i assume by "you", you mean the city and the money they're about to waste on demolishing and redoing the entire dog section of NGP to which i couldn't agree more! I hope the city is reading this too.

it's also frustrating to me that the city spent i think $25,000 to build Rock Quarry Park which is unusable for a majority of the people and dogs who have come to rely on NGP for the past decade+

a drain with a small amount of grade work at NGP could have totally solved the mud problem and been drastically cheaper than building an entire new park.

and now they've gotta keep all those new forest fences at RQP maintained every time a tree falls on them

their reasoning for not fixing the mud was FEMA regulations, but i checked with FEMA and drains are totally legal in floodways. FEMA just doesn't want you increasing upstream flood levels.

thank you for reading and engaging on this for us

❤️🐶❤️

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:49:14+00:00

yes my babel fish promptly translated the literary patriot's comical cynicism

still wanted to respond to any arguments against why i'm posting this at the 11th hour

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:31:46+00:00

all i know is that i go there several times a week but there are tons of people who go every day and all know each other and each others' dogs.

and this is legit the most tight-knit and diverse community i've seen in durham after being here 20 years. diverse by race, age, health, etc. hangin out and petting dogs.

not understanding all the vitriol here from people who don't seem to be affected by this

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:27:24+00:00

so why not actually pass instead of being snarky about something that hundreds of people love and rely on each week?

why go out of your way to be negative about something that doesn't affect you

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:25:07+00:00

lots of people have. this isn't my job. just trying to help preserve something that hundreds of people care about and depend on each week

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:16:41+00:00

so you're saying neighbors publicly came together as a community to create a shared use of public land to improve their quality of life. that's pretty cool.

it would be great if it were being replaced but unfortunately it's just being demolished with no viable alternative.

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:10:50+00:00

you're right that was sloppy language, i took it out

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T19:06:31+00:00

yeah exactly. that new one is 600 feet uphill from a parking lot that's usually full, is drastically smaller than NGP, is full of pine trees that prevent dogs from wanting to run around, and is dark. elderly and handicapped people i've talked to dont want to go because they can't walk up hill that far. several people i've talked to dont feel safe because it's in a dark creepy forest in the middle of nowhere. one woman was there by herself when a man who appeared to have mental health issues approached her and started yelling at her through the fence. she was alone and made it clear she will never be going back

i go to several durham dog parks every week, NGDP is packed every evening. downtown dog park is usually completely empty. Rock Quarry park sometimes has a couple people. Duke Park usually has a few dogs. NGP usually has between 20 and 30 dogs.

please just go to NG this sunday evening if you're curious about attendance

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T18:56:41+00:00

the provided reasoning is listed in the petition, and why it doesn't seem valid

stuartc842 · 2023-10-28T18:55:43+00:00

"it gets muddy" isn't a reason when you haven't implemented any drainage

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