MOSSEL BAY NEWS - Vintcent Park is a small "green lung" near Park Primary School in Mossel Bay. 

The Mossel Bay Advertiser received this touching letter from a former Mossel Bay resident, recalling the many happy hours she spent in the park, as a child.

See the full letter from Janine Boshoff below:

I have recently become aware that the municipality is looking to rezone and develop Vintcent Park and I wanted to take this opportunity to voice my disapproval and concern about this.

My family home is in Hofmeyr Street and the view of Vintcent Park from my bedroom window has been a mainstay of my youth and young adulthood.

For many years, our home did not have a fence around it and my sister and I would head into the park to play in the afternoons. The trees and pine cones of the park provided hours of entertainment to those two little girls.

I realise that Vintcent Park presents a maintenance cost to the municipality that you would rather not worry about in an environment of economic recession and a shrinking tax base, but I beg you to reconsider the rezoning and development of the park.

I currently live in London and work for an environmental consultancy that is helping London boroughs provide better living standards for its residents.

Time and time again, access to parks provides a multitude of benefits that other government-provided infrastructure cannot provide: access to safe recreation space, physical health benefits, mental health benefits, carbon sequestration, pollution mitigation, increased property values and climate cooling.

South Africa is still far behind the European countries in terms of valuing green space, but what I can tell you from my experience here is that parks and green space are valuable and finite resources.

In the past, the costs of maintaining a park far outweighed the benefits, but that was a shortcoming of valuation techniques, not because parks are a poor investment.

The field of environmental economics and public policy have come a long way and I can guarantee you that the destruction of a public green space is an irreversible mistake and that the park should be protected as a public benefit.

I realise that Vintcent Park may currently seem a maintenance cost that provides no additional benefits to its community, but I am sure that a public-private partnership could yield very valuable resources to the Linkside area.

I, personally, would be happy to assist in providing some research and drafting a natural capital account for Vintcent Park that would lead to a more balanced view of the park and its potential benefits.

I hope that you will continue to communicate with the community members of the Linkside area so that together you can provide an indispensable public good to your constituents in future. Please remember those two little girls playing with pine cones in the Park.

There are many children that could make happy memories in Vintcent Park if the municipality had but the foresight to protect it.

Mossel Bay Municipality:
The council is currently considering the way forward regarding several under utilised open spaces in Mossel Bay.

One of the identified parks that is under utilised and possibly also poses a potential safety risk to adjacent home owners is Vintcent Park. 

A proposal is that part of this park may have to be developed for residential purposes. This proposal is currently in the public domain and the municipality welcomes all comments and suggestions.

Public input may be provided in writing to admin@mosselbay.gov.za.

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