Council Asked to Support El Cerrito Resident for State Commission

On the El Cerrito City Council agenda tonight, April 16, is an item from Councilwoman Janet Abelson to have Mayor Greg Lyman write a letter urging the governor to appoint Patricia Jones, an El Cerrito resident and the executive director of Citizens for East Shore Parks, to the state Park and Recreation Commission.

"Ms. Jones has worked tirelessly for an non-profit environmental organization committed to protecting open space and creating a necklace of shoreline parks from the Oakland Estuary to the Carquinez Straits," says the proposed text of the letter to Gov. Jerry Brown.

"Her office has been located in El Cerrito since 2006," the letter says. "CESP (Citizens for Eastshore Parks) also works to preserve the natural resources and facilitate recreational and educationalopportunities along the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay. Ms. Jones has been extensively involved in community planning efforts to ensure parks are created and properly managed and she knows from on-the-ground experience about the demand to build and maintain parks in and near cities. She has volunteered with the Sierra Club since 2002 and currently serves as the Co-Chair of Sierra Club California’s recently reinvigorated Parks Committee."

The council agenda item, which includes the full text of the letter, is attached to this article.

Jones helped spearhead the successful effort to rename Eastshore State Park in honor of Save the Bay co-founder Sylvia McLaughlin, making it McLaughlin Eastshore State Park. The renaming was approved by the commission on Sept. 28 and capped a park-renaming appeal to the commission in February 2011 that was led by Citizens for East Shore Parks.

The office of Citizens for East Shore Parks, formerly in Albany, moved to El Cerrito five years ago.

There are currently three vacancies among the nine voting seats on the state commission, said Roy Stearns, a spokesman for the state Parks and Recreation Department.

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