A month after reviewing its five-year master plan action items, the Warsaw Park Board was given the projected budgets for 2017-2021 based on that plan at yesterday’s meeting.
Pat Brown, president of Sitescapes Inc., Mishawaka, who has been facilitating the five-year master plan with the parks department, told the board that the figures were based on implementation of the five-year master plan. Looking at it, he said he was surprised because the second- and third-year costs are lower than the first year.
In 2017, the projected budget is $2,328,399; then $2,265,237 in 2018; $2,318,035 in 2019; $2,465,930 in 2020; and $2,458,419 in 2021. “There’s just been some very good planning in the past to allow this to happen in the future,” Brown said. The budgets do reflect adding one staff person in 2019, a recreation programmer, and one in 2020, another full-time park maintenance laborer.
“Because if we start implementing these projects, as we go, at some point we do have to have more maintenance help and need more program help,” he said.
The projected budgets also are based on the parks department being awarded a half million dollar Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs grant in December. If the department does not get the grant, then the action plan and budget will have to be revised so the projects that were planned for that money can be prioritized and spread out over a few years. The projects included improvements to two parks along East Market Street that were part of Stellar Communities. “All in all, I was quite pleased with it,” Brown said of the projected budgets. “The action plan came through as something very doable. This budget shows that we can get it accomplished.”
The final version of the five-year master plan isn’t due to the Indiana Department of Natural Resources until April, with a draft version due to the DNR by Jan. 15. Another public hearing on the plan will be held after Jan. 15, with the board voting on the plan in March.
Since the park board may not have a December meeting, and its meeting in January isn’t until after Jan. 15, the board voted to give Parks Superintendent Larry Plummer authority to send the five-year master plan draft to the DNR.
The other item on Tuesday’s agenda was a report by Maintenance Director Shaun Gardner on the holiday preparations, mostly involving Central Park.
“The crew took full advantage of the beautiful weather we had over the last couple of weeks. We really got after it and the whole (Christmas) display is set up,” Gardner said.
Parks employees are going through and doing some minor touch-ups. Next week, he said, they will start lighting the displays in the morning and checking them out to make sure they’re functioning correctly.
“The beautiful thing about getting done so fast is that now we can catch up on leaves,” he said.
He said the Christmas display will be neat this year and there are three new items. There is a 20-foot tree with light streams coming down that is in front of the Glover Pavilion. “It’s got LED bulbs. It’s going to be pretty neat,” Gardner said.
Another one is an animated Santa Claus driving a train, and the third is an animated display of elves shooting presents out of a cannon. “I’m really excited to see all of this stuff lit up,” he said.
The official lighting of the display will be Dec. 2 during First Friday. City Council representative to the board Diane Quance asked how long the display will remain up. Gardner replied until New Year’s Day.
In other business, the board was told:
• Parks Administrative Assistant Heather Frazier had an article about the Warsaw parks recently published in the Indiana Parks & Recreation Association magazine.
• Rocks for the Pike Lake shoreline stabilization project at Lucerne Park are being placed. In the spring, the plugs will be put in after the freezing is over. The project will be completed in 2017, Plummer said.
