Archery Range License Vote Delayed Again

The Parks and Recreation Commission Tuesday night faced a crowded hearing room and an intense discussion about the Lower Arroyo Archery Range for the third time in the recent past, again reaching a conclusion that they support the historic Archery Range to be a continued designated space for archery.

However, the motion brought to the table by Commissioner Rita Moreno only included three of the four recommendations made by staff, excluding the recommendation to accept the proposed deal points for the license with the Pasadena Roving Archers.

The Commission will be bringing the item back a fourth time as Moreno instructed staff to bring back more information about the deal points.

“I think its unfortunate we are back here again considering this issue. For a number of reasons, one of which we have rather thoroughly considered essentially the same program basically twice over the past several years, the City Council sent it back for further consideration for whatever political reasons they saw fit,” Commissioner Thom Mrozek said.

After a long discussion and hours of comments from the public on both sides of the issue that lasted into the early morning of the September 16 City Council meeting, the Council chose to take no action and instructed staff to bring back more information, particularly regarding the residency of the members of the Pasadena Roving Archers, an issue that escalated at the Commission meeting.

“I think folks are very committed to what they think and feel about this situation, I have not heard anything different that changes my opinion about what this should be which is an archery range,” Moreno said.

From conversations Moreno had with the police, she gathered that no incidents with arrows had been reported except for arrows that appeared to be 40 years old. She said that sometimes if a person feels strongly about a certain position the issue can become overstated.

“We haven’t had these situations come up in real life except in the letters that we’ve been getting as part of the Commission about the safety issue,” Moreno said.

John Whitaker who is not a member of the Pasadena Roving Archers but uses the archery field during the week in the free hours apologized for ‘wasting’ the Commission’s time.

“I apologize that a small number of Pasadena residents is wasting your time once again,” Whitaker said.

Mrozek expressed respect for the tradition of archery that began before he was born and creates a cultural and recreational asset to the city. He was in favor of the staff’s proposal.

“Changing the format of what is left and this concerted effort to reduce whether it be the time or the number of lanes that is available is a slippery slope toward eradicating the facility, which some people want to do. I don’t think that’s a good idea for any reason,” Mrozek said.

The Pasadena Roving Archers agreed with most of the deal points and came supportive of the license agreement with only slight changes and a few questions on the feasibility of having no parking on invitational tournament days and how the club will out reach to more archers as the programs are already full.

The main point of contention between the Pasadena Roving Archers and the city remains the membership list. The City has requested a membership list with zip codes of the members and says that the PRA has provided membership lists in the past. However, a lawyer representing the PRA said the city must first find an overriding reason why they need to see the lists before it’s required to be published.

“As I represented communities through the years, periodically people will ask for a membership list as a way to somehow focus on the members and call out members as people who are doing something improper,” Angela Johnson Meszaros said who represents social environmental justice issues and litigated cases regarding CEQA.

Meszaros quoted a Supreme Court Ruling of the NAACP vs. the State of Alabama when Alabama requested a membership list. The ruling was there needs to be an overriding interest of the state for them to demand a list.

“Here it’s not clear why the city of Pasadena needs this list. The fee split is based on participants. It is unclear why and how the membership list, provides more useful information for the city of Pasadena to shepherd its resources in the Lower Arroyo,” Meszaraos said.

At the September 16 Council meeting Councilmember Steve Madison said that the Council’s foremost obligation is to the residents of Pasadena.

Although the Pasadena Roving Archers have not provided the requested membership list, a document that staff tallied showed 5,203 participants in the Saturday classes and home school groups, 1,217 of which live or work in Pasadena or attend school in Pasadena, Sierra Madre or Altadena, roughly 23.4 percent. However, the participants in the Sunday tournaments are not included in this count as those participants are not recorded by the PRA.
“To take a resource like this away and punish the Pasadena Roving Archers for allowing too many nonresidents seems silly to me,” Brian Seagrave said. Seagrave comes from Monrovia to volunteer as a licensed archery instructor every Saturday.

Thomas Seifert, an owner of a property adjacent to the Lower Arroyo asked for “limited exclusivity” so that the archers could have “all the rights that they feel they’re entitled to,” and then when the archers are not using their “limited exclusivity” the area would be open to walkers, joggers and all persons of Pasadena.

Mrozek turned the idea down, “Were here discussing this thing and have been for 3 years because people in that neighborhood have said shared use does not work. The only logical conclusion it seems, the only way to do it is to say, like we do with the casting pond, like we do at Brookside Golf Course, the facility is designed for one use and one use only. Particularly like at Brookside which by the way is fenced to keep people out because it’s dangerous. You shouldn’t be walking there.”

Jim MacQuarrie pointed out that ‘shared use’ has been illegal since 1990 when a Municipal Code was passed that all recreational activities should take place in their defined areas.

“At each end of the range, there are signs posted that explicitly state that it is illegal to walk between archers and targets, which is what the ‘shared use’ people are demanding to do. Those signs have been posted for over 20 years. When hikers and riders have ‘shared the space in the past,’ they were in violation of the law,” MacQuarrie said.

The matter of the license for the Lower Arroyo Archery Range with the PRA will be delayed until the issue returns to the Parks and Recreation Commission with more information and improvements of the deal points.