The Mexico Parks and Recreation Board will recommend to the city council a change in the city’s ordinances to eliminate tent camping at Lakeview Park.

The vote was unanimous although it was preceded by a lengthy conversation and some debate about the issue of homelessness and how it’s affecting the park. There are 18 camping spots in the park with only two being for tent camping. Parks and Recreation Director Chad Shoemaker said over the years about 80 percent of problems stem from those two spots. In recent years it's been more like 97-98 percent.

“We have chased our tails on this for so many years,” Shoemaker told the board.

Shoemaker said the issue keeps getting worse with church groups and law enforcement from other areas bringing homeless people to Mexico and dumping them at Walmart. In the case of the churches, they purchase a tent and drop them off at the park. The problem only got worse this summer when the city lost its camp host.

“Whenever we don’t have a camp host on site they pop up like mushrooms,” Shoemaker said.

Board member Josh Price raised some concerns but ultimately voted in favor of the recommendation. Price is concerned the problem will just move somewhere else.

“They’re just going to move to a different location,” Price said. “I’m not really a big fan of the out of sight out of mind kind of approach.”

Price said the homeless population will move to other parks in the system and make it harder for law enforcement to control.

“You’re going to have police officers walking through the woods as they have already been doing,” Price said. “It’s going to be harder on our police officers.”

Shoemaker said the issue puts other people who want to use the park at odds with the tent campers. He said in the last month someone had a dog sick on them and another person was witnessed disrobing in the street.

“I have a playground right there,” Shoemaker said. “We’re creating a problem where there is a direct interface between people that have serious problems that need serious help and people who are just trying to recreate and have a good time. That’s a huge user conflict between those two groups.”

Board member Sherri Chedwick said she feels sorry for those folks who are without a home but when it comes down to kids the choice isn’t hard.

“There is a concern of what if something happens to one of those kids,” Chedwick said. “I feel bad for them but I would rather look out for the kids.”

Board member Janice McIntosh said she’s experienced the campers as someone who walks the trail regularly. The city recently got a camp host and since then the homeless tent camping has died down quite a bit.

“This morning it was a totally different feeling because there were no tents there,” McIntosh said. “No people were wandering around. It was a good feeling this morning not having them there.”

“Unfortunately that’s the experience I've heard over and over and over for about two or three years,” Shoemaker said following McIntosh’s comments. “We’re not taking this step lightly. We’ve been working on this for a long time.”

Shoemaker said his department will not immediately take this issue to the council because a lot of things have to be put in place for that to happen including the legal wording of the change. Shoemaker would like to see tent camping struck from the text and the word “shall” replaced with “may” when it comes to allowing camping.

“We’re going to hang our hat on the camp host for right now,” Shoemaker said. “That gives us time.”