Editor’s note: Below find a special report about Church Hill’s ongoing l’affair pétanque. If you haven’t yet, please consider upgrading to keep independent journalism about your neighborhood free for all to read. Here’s how to submit tips, documents, correspondence, etc. with The Lookout for editorial consideration. Check the liveblog for reporting odds-and-ends about this controversy.—Dave.

The future of Chimborazo Playground will go to a vote, and the fate of the controversial, partly constructed pétanque courts hangs in the balance.

On Wednesday evening, some 30 people once again trekked up Fulton Hill to attend a meeting hosted by the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities (DPR) regarding its new plans for Church Hill’s ~3.5-acre park. The old plans—adding additional courts for pétanque, a lesser-known French bowling game favored by a local club—stoked confusion and outrage from the neighborhood earlier this summer. That project was paused in mid-May in the face of pushback from the community and a missing stormwater permit that DPR never obtained from the state. Now, officials want the neighborhood to vote on what should happen when the work resumes.

“We have half a million dollars committed to this process,” said Ryan Rinn, a capital projects planner for DPR, who spearheaded the retroactive process of soliciting and analyzing community feedback on improvements to the park. He presented a slide deck Wednesday evening outlining three options for how to put that money to work; the options reflect comments from two June meetings and a corresponding online survey about l’affair pétanque. The deck, with detailed descriptions and costs estimates of those options, can be found in The Lookout’s share drive.

With DPR director Christopher Frelke and Richmond City Council President and 7th District Councilmember Cynthia Newbille looking on, Rinn and Nissa Richardson (DPR deputy director of capital projects) walked through the trio of potential paths for the park.

Each option includes renovations to the park’s bathroom facilities and water fountain, which have been out of service for years. “Getting the bathrooms open and usable to the public […] as well as the water fountain, which was already long-term a priority, we know we can do that,” said Richardson.

Beyond the new plumbing, though, paths diverge, and DPR’s Frelke said it’s up to “the majority” to decide which one to follow in Chimborazo Playground. “We're just trying to see after everything we've heard, how can we get the community to say, ‘We want to go with this’ or ‘We want to go with that,’” he said. To that end, DPR published an online survey that will remain open until Friday, August 29th at 11:59pm to gather votes.

The options presented for the first time at Wednesday evening’s meeting—which featured featured a more subdued tone and thinner attendance than the June gatherings—are as follows:

Some attendees expressed concern that the third option has the lowest cost estimate, arguing that because it does not factor in any of the currently unknown prices of future upgrades recommended by the planners, a voter intent on limiting spending on the park could choose it erroneously.

“People might vote money without understanding,” an attendee warned. Rinn agreed to clarify the nature of this estimate to the extent possible. “I think we can make it clear that that cost is for the planning process, and the budget that's going to come out of that is going to be something that we don't know,” he said.

DPR officials encouraged attendees at the meeting to vote by affixing dots to paper posters on the wall labeled with their preferred option. Those not in attendance can register their selection via an online survey that will remain open until Friday, August 29th at 11:59pm.

Perhaps recalling an (apparently innocuous) instance of duplicate voting at one of DPR’s June meetings, attendees grilled Rinn and Richardson on election integrity. “You said that you were going to move forward with whatever the majority of people vote,” said one person. “Who votes? We've had people speak up who don't live in our neighborhood. I represent a family of four plus two grandparents who live in the neighborhood. Do all six of us vote?”

“All of our parks are open to everybody, so it doesn’t matter where you live when you want to vote on this,” responded Rinn. “I think that if your kids want to inform your vote, that's great. I don't think, unless they're able to get up and vote for themselves, that that we can have multiple extra votes because you have… If they all have their own email addresses…”

He paused, considering the conundrum. “I guess, I’m not gonna… I don't run a registrar,” he says, eliciting some tense laughter from the crowd. “This is a public engagement process. Use your best judgement.”

Check The Lookout’s L’Affair Pétanque Liveblog for the latest reportage.

This has been a Lookout special report. Please submit tips, photos, etc. about the East End for editorial consideration. Consider upgrading your subscription and/or buying merch to support independent journalism about your neighborhood.