Title
Recommend a Name for the Park Formerly Known as Jackson Park
Body
To: Honorable Chair and Members of the Recreation and Park Commission
From: Amy Wooldridge, Recreation and Parks Director
Re: Recommend a Name for the Park Formerly Known as Jackson Park
BACKGROUND
At the May 10 and June 14, 2018 meetings, in response to a written request from a community member to rename Jackson Park, the Recreation and Parks Commission (Commission) discussed the history of President Andrew Jackson and the policy and process to rename a park. The Commission didn’t take action on the renaming request and instead requested the item return for further discussion at a later date.
An online local petition was organized to rename Jackson Park and in 2020 garnered over 1,200 signatures in support.
At the July 9, 2020 meeting, the Commission unanimously voted to recommend to City Council that Jackson Park be renamed. The Commission also established a subcommittee to facilitate a naming committee that represents a diverse cross-section of the Alameda community and that the Commission will recommend a new name of the Park to City Council by December 31, 2020.
At the July 21, 2020 meeting, City Council unanimously approved denaming Jackson Park.
Alameda’s first park was named after President Andrew Jackson in 1909. It is being renamed because Jackson personally enslaved hundreds of Africans and was the architect of the Indian Removal Act. Under Jackson’s Removal policy (now known as the Trail of Tears), Federal troops evicted indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands in the southwest U.S. and marched them to new reservations in Oklahoma, resulting in thousands of deaths from starvation and exposure.
DISCUSSION
The Commission’s subcommittee appointed 13 committee members. Most people submitted an application based on specific questions and a few members were directly appointed in an effort to represent a wide range of interests in the park renaming process. This Park Renaming Committee (Committee) is a dedicated group of people who met weekly from September through December with additional work between the meetings. We are grateful for their time, deep thought and creativity on this renaming effort.
The Committee began by establishing its process, goals and naming criteria.
Committee Goals:
1) Recommend names for the park formerly known as Jackson Park to the Commission. More information is detailed below on this goal.
2) Recommend ideas to revise the existing Naming Policy and ways we can make the naming process more inclusive. Recommendations on changes to the citywide Naming Policy and the process to name new parks and rename parks will be brought to the City Council for initial discussion in January 2021 with further feedback and refinement from the Commission in February 2021.
3) To educate the community on why we are renaming the park. The committee focused on education about why the park is being renamed as part of a Community Forum on November 23, 2020. In addition, a smaller group of the Committee will work with staff to develop text for permanent educational signage at the park.
As the first step to establish a list of names and ultimately a recommendation, the Committee created the following naming criteria:
Naming Criteria: We are seeking a park name that reflects inclusion, diversity, and equity of the entire community of Alameda, and which represents social justice, human rights, and/or anti-racism. If a person’s name is submitted, they must be deceased. Submitted park names should be related to Alameda and/or the greater SF Bay Area.
The Committee then solicited name ideas from the Alameda community. An outreach subcommittee reached out to over 100 organizations and social media groups, including information distribution to all tenants with the Alameda Housing Authority and in all book bags through the Alameda Library. Information for name solicitation was also emailed to more than 10,000 people. Significant effort was put into diverse and inclusive outreach to invite people into the conversation who may not traditionally engage in city-led meetings and activities. Ultimately, we received 155 individual name ideas from more than 200 total submissions.
The names were vetted to meet the first basic naming criteria from the citywide naming policy that requires a person must be deceased. A vetting subcommittee then reviewed and scored the names based on the criteria described above. A top list of names was discussed by the entire Committee and the list of top ten names was finalized.
On November 23, 2020, the Committee hosted a Community Forum to educate the community on why the park is being renamed, provide information about each of the top ten names and then to solicit feedback on those names. Staff invited the Language Carrier from the Confederated Villages of Lisjan Ohlone and the Sogorea Te Land Trust to join the Community Forum to share their thoughts on the names, Ohlone and Chochenyo. She shared that they supported both names and staff has since reached out again to ask if they prefer one of the names. After the Forum, staff posted detailed information on all ten names, the video and chat from the Community Forum and an online survey with the top ten names. This survey was available to the public until November 27th and received 625 responses. It is important to note that this survey included a demographics question and the large majority of respondents were older, white residents. Due to the short timeframe for this survey (open for five days) so this recommendation could come to the Commission by the December deadline, the broader and more diverse outreach discussed earlier, was not conducted. The survey was primarily posted on the ARPD email list and social media.
The Committee then met to compile all of the data, including polling and discussion at the Community Forum and the online survey. They formulated their final name recommendation to the Commission which includes the following names and more detailed information on each name is described in Exhibit 1.
Recommended Names (in no particular order)
Ohlone
Chochenyo
Mabel Tatum
Justice
The Commission is being requested to make a final recommendation of a name or multiple names to the City Council who will have the final authority on the name choice for the park.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
A sign for the new name will be purchased and installed at an expense of approximately $10,000, funded from the General Fund - Parks Maintenance budget. The educational signage is estimated to cost an additional $4,000 with funding to be determined.
RECOMMENDATION
Recommend a name for the park formerly known as Jackson Park.
Respectfully submitted,
Amy Wooldridge, Recreation and Parks Director
Exhibits:
1. Information on Top 10 Names and Final 4 Recommended by the Renaming Committee