M.J. Gravina/Sun Post 

SPONSORING SHASTA: Manteca’s Shasta Park is getting a brand new playground, but just how fancy it is will depend on the success of a fundraising campaign. Lifelong Shasta resident Keith Jackson hopes to raise $105,000 in sponsorship to pay for rope play features and climbing walls. If he and his cohorts succeed, it could change the way Manteca pays for its parks from now on.

MANTECA — Donations from residents and corporate sponsors could give a boost to a new Shasta Park playground, the guinea pig of a new donations program OK’d by the City Council last year.

Keith Jackson, who has lived adjacent to Shasta Park all his life, remembers playing in the park’s western-themed playground when he was a kid.

But after the covered wagons and cannons were torn down in the 1980s, Jackson said, only a couple shabby slides remained. Today even the slides are gone, as two big sand pits sit in wait of an eventual play area.

“Kids make these mounds and they ride their bikes on them,” said Jackson, 46, pointing out makeshift bike jumps in the sand. “It’s like, how depressing.”

Manteca's Parks and Recreation Department has $75,000 set aside for new playground equipment for the park. The money will cover the basics — new slides, swings, monkey bars and teeter totters — for two age-specific playgrounds.

But Jackson, his wife Helen, and a few fellow Shasta residents have their sights set on a more lavish design, full of rope play features and curving climbing walls, which would cost $180,000.

So the group is working with the city on an ambitious fundraising campaign to raise the $105,000 balance.
 

“We as community members need to step up and say how important this park is to us and our kids,” Jackson said.

The City Council in April 2007 started looking at sponsorship as an economical way to upgrade the parks on a dime. Some voiced concerns that offering naming rights to corporations could lead to controversial companies plastering their names on city parks.

Shasta Park’s name isn’t on the line, Jackson said, but a corporation could put its name on the playground itself if it coughs up half the cost of the project.

The City Council must approve all naming first, according to the city’s gift policy — and brand names that cast a “negative image” upon the city won’t make the cut.

People who give $20 will get a Shasta Park magnet or a t-shirt; people or businesses that give $1,000 will get their name on a bronze plaque on a wall near the playground.

Shasta School families and neighbors will be among those targeted for gifts, Jackson said.

If the Shasta fundraising scheme works, it could be replicated on future Manteca parks projects, said Deputy Parks and Recreation Director Bruce Mulder.

"We are kind of looking at this as a model program," Mulder said. "(The city has) a certain amount of money, but if the community wants to get involved and enhance their playground then, by all means, we'd like to work with them."

The deadline for fundraising is June 9. Mulder said he hopes to have the playground completed by December, shortly after the expected opening of the new gymnasium at adjacent Shasta Elementary School.