By Dan Spalding
News Now Warsaw
WARSAW — The first of three meetings this week hosted by the Kosciusko County Parks Board was held Tuesday at Warsaw Community Public Library.
A series of large maps at the library highlighted existing trails in Kosciusko County and park board officials were available to talk with visitors about what they’d like to see develop in the future.
The meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are a chance for the public to provide ideas as the board works to develop trails and connections to existing trails as well as plans for blueways, which are waterways such as rivers and creeks that could be enhanced for kayaks and canoes.
Parks Board President Rob Bishop said the meetings represent a great chance to help lay the foundation for long-term plans.
“It’s vitally important that citizens come in and help us, tell us, where trails should be, where greenways should be, where blueways should be,” Bishop said. “This is not the parks board’s trail. This is the communities’s trails.”
The park was established less than two years ago and has spent much of its time on its first project, a future trail that connects with the historic Chinworth Bridge and heads west.
At the same time, the board is assembling a master plan.
“Do we build out to Pierceton, do we build to Silver Lake or Claypool? … All that needs to be part of the plan. We need the residents to tell us what they want,” Bishop said.
The board will host meetings on Wednesday at the Syracuse Community Center and on Thursday at the Silver Lake Lions Club on North Harrison Street.
The start time for both meetings is 5:30 p.m.
