Council Adds Mike Alvarez's Name to Ninth Street Park

It was 1978 and Benicia was a quite different place when future Vice-Mayor and County Supervisor John Silva, then city manager, hired a young San Jose State graduate away from the City of Pittsburg to be his new director of Parks and Recreation.

Two Benicia lifers cast a glance back to those days Tuesday night before the City Council unanimously backed a Parks, Recreation and Cemetery Commission recommendation to put recent retiree Michael Alvarez's name on Ninth Street Park.

"I just thought it would be a really great thing to name it after Mike," former commissioner Bonnie Silveria told the council of her suggestion to rename what has been officially called Ninth Street Launching Facility. She recalled that Benicia had but a handful of its current roster of 30-plus parks then, and that didn't include the rocky outcropping she said was then known as Diamond Beach.

Despite neighborhood resistance, she said, the park was the first of many Alvarez helped develop in the town, and it soon will have a sign at its east end bearing the name Alvarez Ninth Street Park.

Chairwoman Nancy Cockerham explained that the parks commission didn't want to confuse residents accustomed to the park's longtime name and thus the recommended the compromise name.

"I think that this leads down a bad path," warned Benicia resident Mike Smith, the one dissenting voice in a sparse crowd at Tuesday night's meeting. Smith suggested developing a naming policy that "doesn't honor people for basically doing their job, which is what Mike did."

"The constant renaming of things in Benicia needs to have a higher standard," he said, suggesting, perhaps in jest, that a future city retiree might ask to have First Street renamed after him or her.

Councilman Mark Hughes acknowledged hearing several such arguments about the proposal from residents in recent days, as well as whether things should be named for those still living.

"It's so much more of an honor if the recipient can appreciate it," said Hughes, also a former parks commissioner. He disagreed that the proposal was "a dangerous precedent" and lauded Alvarez's leadership in the growth of Benicia's parks system. "He was the leader. He was the passion behind all these things."

Alvarez did not attend, but new Parks and Community Services Director Mike Dotson, his protege, introduced the item to the council.

In endorsing the renaming, Councilman Mike Ioakimedes hearkened back to the days when city baseball teams "had to wait until the tides went out" before they could practice on the city's mostly undeveloped fields.

"Every major project along the way, the guy could see further along," Ioakimedes said, praising Alvarez's "vision" in his three decades at City Hall. "I think he's deserving of his name on a piece of wood at Ninth Street."

"This is kind of a dangerous thing to do," Councilman Tom Campbell said, warning that debate or divided votes on such proposals could be embarassing to a person. "Before we do this again, we need to have some very serious rules."

In answer to a question by Campbell, Silveria related the background of several other facilities that have been named for longtime residents. Before approving the change, council instructed city staff to begin developing a protocol for commemorative namings.

Disclosure: Daniel Smith was elected and served on the City Council from 2001-2005 after two terms on the city parks commission.