Mayor David Lange announced at the Aug. 20 Marthasville Board of Aldermen meeting that the city had received approval for a Land and Water Conservation grant worth $275,000 to build a new RV park and campsite at Wessel Park.
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Mayor David Lange announced at the Aug. 20 Marthasville Board of Aldermen meeting that the city had received approval for a Land and Water Conservation grant worth $275,000 to build a new RV park and campsite at Wessel Park.
“That goes toward the building, the shower house, restrooms, laying water and sewer lines back into there, building a tent camp and all that stuff,” said Lange.
The mayor said the project would include about 20 spots for RVs, along with 10 spots for camping, electric hookups, restrooms with showers and a pavilion with a few picnic tables.
He said the city had started the application process for this grant over four years ago. The board voted 3-1 to go out for bid on the project with Alderman Leo Meyer voting against it.
“It’s been such a long time and things have changed, I’m sort of against doing it,” said Meyer. “We’ve got other things to spend on, street extensions or possibly finding a place to build a shed.”
However Meyer was not the only critic of the federal grant proposal, which carries a 50% matching requirement. Aldermen Gary Dixon and Chris DeVore also expressed some trepidation at spending that much money, although they were convinced by Alderman Nick Lange to go out for bid since the bid packet was already prepared.
Alderman Lange questioned why any of the other board members would oppose going out for bid. He pointed out that Cochran Engineering already has the bid packet ready for the project and the city would not have to spend any additional funds to go out for bid.
“Why would you not want to see what it’s going to cost and get the information in, then to evaluate, and then to vote however you want,” said Alderman Lange.
DeVore also expressed concerns with how they would operate the RV park without any kind of monitor or additional staff.
“We don’t have anybody to enforce keeping those people out of there. So if you’ve got people camping in this thing, and all these people decide they want to pull in there and park and surround all these people in their campers, or whoever might be in there, we may run into a big issue,” said DeVore.
Alderman Lange shrugged off those concerns saying with their small town community he felt people would be understanding.
“Polite people when you’re having events in town understand those situations, it’s a community, we’re a small town,” said Alderman Lange.
He also pointed out that the actual cost of the project may be lower than their matching requirement depending on bids and the amount of in-kind work the city can conduct on the campground.
In the end Alderman Lange felt it would be a new source of revenue for the city as people paid to reserve spots at the campground and spend their money at Marthasville businesses while they were in town.
The city expects to receive bids later this year, at which point the aldermen will have to come to a decision on the future of the project.
