The hammer fell Tuesday night on the first casualty of the city’s $4.4 million parks revitalization plan.
It may not be the last casualty, and city officials are trying to prepare for that possibility.
“A lot of things on the list of things we’d like to get done may not happen this time,” Mayor Keith Gaskin said Wednesday during his regular press conference at City Hall.
The council on Tuesday accepted the low bid of $1,473,600 for turf, lighting and fencing for what will become the youth baseball fields at Propst Park — one of several phases included in the overall parks plan. That bid was $473,600 more than the estimate, leaving the city to scramble for ways to make up the difference.
Parks Director Greg Lewis proposed cutting $250,000 in planned operations and maintenance expenses included in the parks plan budget. Unused finance charges that can be applied to the project, along with funds from a Major League Baseball grant for which the city has applied, could cover the rest.
The operations and maintenance costs being cut include $120,000 for 10 years’ worth of herbicide, $100,000 for general building maintenance and buying two new mowers at a combined value of $30,000, City Engineer Kevin Stafford told The Dispatch.
“(There’s nothing directly) related to field and turf maintenance,” he said. “… Inside of these capital improvements, there are no O&M funds to follow that up. … Greg will have to figure that out inside his annual (operations) budget.”
Those turf fields should last about 10 years, Stafford said.
The council voted in May to fund the parks revitalization plan, borrowing $3 million in bonds and using another $1.4 million collected from its tourism tax allocation over the past four years. The city will use the $400,000 it will receive annually for the next 10 years from the tourism tax to repay the bonds, which carry roughly $800,000 in interest.
Plans include swapping the youth softball and baseball fields at Propst Park, rather than building new ones, and turfing the baseball fields since they will sit on higher ground. The plan also calls for improvements to the playground and splash pad, installing pickleball courts, upgrading lighting at the Field of Dreams and improvements to existing pavilions.
Outside of Propst, about $643,000 will be spread among seven community centers.
But Stafford echoed Gaskin’s concerns Wednesday that the city may not realize every element of its plan.
“Using round numbers, if everything comes in 20% over, then 20% of that list will have to go away,” Stafford said. “… Something’s got to give if things keep coming in over budget.”
Still, Gaskin considers some items beyond the fields as sacred cows.
“I would say we don’t want to cut pickleball,” Gaskin said. “Everywhere I go, people are asking me about pickleball.”
During the press conference, CFO James Brigham offered a few items to adjust to save money while also honoring the spirit of the plan.
For instance, a planned concrete spectator area at the Propst fields, estimated to cost $200,000, could be cheaper with blacktop, he said. There may be less expensive alternatives for $200,000 in planned backstops, and the parks could sell sponsorships to cover $40,000 for new scoreboards.
“There’s places where there’s opportunity to make adjustments,” Brigham said. “Obviously, we don’t want to cut out a park or other sports.”
Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones said he remains hopeful future bids will fall more in line with project estimates. If they don’t, he said the council would “deal with each instance as it comes.”
He mentioned the city can also use interest it gains from unspent bond money sitting in the bank to defray some of the overages.
“We want to give the kids the best we can give them,” Jones said.
As for the operations and maintenance cuts, Jones said he would like to see the council find a way to add at least some of that back to the parks’ annual budget that comes from the city’s general fund.
“We can’t just spend all that money (on improvements) and not have any to maintain it,” he said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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