BATON ROUGE - If you live in North Baton Rouge, a park near your home may soon close. BREC is looking to sell the land of seven community parks in that area.

But, during Tuesday afternoon's planning and park resources advisory committee meeting, only three moved on to go before BREC commissioners for final approval: Alexander Street Park, Belfair Park, and Blueberry Street Park. 

Fortune Addition Park, Wenonah Street Park, Dover Street Park, and Lanier Drive Park were deferred. 

Dale Flowers lives right around the corner from one of the parks proposed to close, Blueberry Street Park.

"Instead of trying to sell off properties, they should re-imagine. Something I keep hearing is low usage, by whoever is presenting this, low usage, low usage. Well, have you tried to do something different with the parks to improve the usage?" Flowers said.

BREC says some of the criteria for the parks to be considered obsolete include: whether it was a redundant facility, the size, whether the property is located in an inaccessible area or of low public value, and how many people actually use the facility.

But, residents and city leaders say decisions like this should not be made without input from the community.

"When you are dealing with taxpayer dollars, you don't just don't do things haphazardly without bringing these things forth to the community," East Baton Rouge School Board member Dadrius Lanus said.

BREC officials say the community outreach was through the "Imagine Your Parks Three Plan."

Lanus and East Baton Rouge Metro Council Member Darryl Hurst say there was no discussion of closing parks in their district.

"As a council member, I went through IYP3 talking about park systems being improved, but they didn't talk about the ones being taken offline, cause I would have had a discussion three months ago about when I sat in the same meeting with the commission to talk about let's engage with the community before we take our next steps," Hurst said.

BREC Interim Superintendent Janet Simmons says she thinks the decision to defer four out of the three proposed parks was the right decision.

"Based on what the community feedback was, I think we do need to hear more," Simmons said.

The next steps for the three parks that passed the committee on Tuesday is a public hearing next month. What will happen to the other four parks is expected to be discussed at the next committee meeting.