Drastic changes planned for Fountain of the Sun green spaces

Below is one home-owner's appraisal of the plan presented at the June 19, 2019 FOSA board meeting. This plan would completely eliminate one of our community's current green spaces which has served this community well as a water retention basin for decades.

The plan being submitted to the City of Mesa would change one of these green spaces into a parking lot and gallery of multple noisy sports venues. Long time resident Dave Bode offers this review:

#1. Every Fountain of the Sun home-owner that has lived next to the East and West water retention basins for many decades has confirmed that neither of those basins has ever been filled to overflow. They have proved to be quite sufficient, as they are.

#2. An alternative to the Henderson-FOSA proposed plan that would be far less costly would be to simply cut a drainage channel from Pueblo into both of the East and West basins. That would divert water into the retention basins and reduce the flow of water to the Sossaman gate. Doing this would add much more than the mere .08 acre feet of projected improvement described in the proposed plan.

#3. As to having the water retention areas dissipate within 36 hours, those basins always did that just fine until board members stopped watering the trees so they died and were removed.

#4. The current water retention areas are grand-fathered in, and unless they are significantly altered, they do not have to conform to any new rules and regulations. These areas have served Fountain of the Sun adequately for more than 40 years, before the trees were removed.

#5. The movement of dirt from the East retention area to the West would be needlessly expensive. Re-doing Pueblo with the heavy loads and equipment used would break up the street. Dry wells are very expensive to build and expensive to maintain; much more expensive than maintaining the current water retention basins as they are.

#6. The proposal of the Henderson drawing on 5-10-2019 of the East basin and the Henderson drawing on 5-17-2019 of the Kellen Revision 2 West basin would conservatively cost an estimated 5 to 7 million dollars!

#7. The water retention basins should be kept green and beautiful so there is no conflict or degradation or adverse impact on property value or aesthetics for the home-owners whose homes are adjacent to them.