Menomoniee Park in Oshkosh has a problem, a big problem.
The City of Oshkosh has provided one of the best boat launches along the western shore of Lake Winnebago, and charges a $5.00 fee to launch any boat at Menomonie Park.
The launch provides a total of 12 slips to launch from including the sail boat and canoe launch at the north end. The facility is well maintained, and is ideal to launch from due to the protection away from the elements of an unforgiving Lake Winnebago.
Given the great amenities to this launch, there is a major flaw in planning. The facility only offers 25 parking spaces for boat trailers on a 12 slip dock, yet offers in excess of 100 car parking stalls. By contrast, Fugelburg launch (south end of Oshkosh) offers 4 slips with 47 parking stalls, which often is overflowing on the weekend.
The Parks Departments uses the parking lot as a dual purpose lot for both softball games and the boat launch. The softball players, which use the parking area at no charge, get significant preference over their fee paying counterparts when it comes to parking (nearly a 5:1 ratio).
Many individuals, including myself, believe that this is done purposefully to generate money for the city through parking violations. On Saturday, we saw approximately 26 vehicles ticketed for parking in two single stalls ($15 ticket), which look like the nearby truck and trailer stalls. There is no signage I observed indicating these spaces are reserved for “cars”.
The issue is that the alternative parking (city streets) is a long walk back to the docks. It also is in an unprotected environment, where theft and vandalism become higher concerns, along with clogging up city streets with oversized parking. The side effect is the huge back up it causes on the water as other boaters have to wait to load their boats while docked boats stay tied up as their owner makes the trip out to the parked vehicles in the local neighborhoods.
Upon making calls to Ray Mauer (Oshkosh Park Director) and Mark Rohloff (City Manager) they have yet to return calls to me about the situation.
My suggestion is to get a group of boaters together to protest the issue. Ideally, when the National Walleye Tour Championship comes to town September 18-20th would be an ideal time to assemble a group of upset citizens to make the issue better known. This is a time to showcase Oshkosh in front of the local and national media, and would provide a perfect time to have the citizens’ concerns heard. It would be highly probable that additional truck and trailer parking spaces will be made available in the main lot during this professional event.
If the City Parks Department were to double the parking spaces to 50, simply by repainting the cross stripe on 25 stalls, it would alleviate much of the issue. The issue is reoccurring, and it appears the Parks Department is indifferent to the situation, or simply doesn’t wish to have the boat traffic and tourism.
Part of the goal of tourism is to bring people to your city, while the other goals is to get the tourist to return in the future. With policies like this, and the indifference to the complaints of the paying users, it appears Oshkosh will continue to ticket in an attempt to drive away paying customers.
Update 5/20/14 1:30 pm Menomoniee Park Follow Up: There will be a segment about the boat trailer parking situation on Fox 11 (WLUK) tonight. It appears there are some additional boat stalls available (18 spots) which have been added to the park in 2014. They are not well signed (placement), and park rangers might have been ticketing these properly parked trailers inadvertently. The Rec Department is checking on the situation, but feel this is unlikely. Bottom line, there still is not enough parking, but your help has brought attention to the issue, and hopefully a fruitful resolution will become of it.
