Members of the Wright City Park Board, a citizen advisory group, questioned the city’s board of aldermen last week about what they described as slow progress toward a new park at Westwoods Road …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
We have recently launched a new and improved website. To continue reading, you will need to either log into your subscriber account, or purchase a new subscription.
If you are a digital subscriber with an active subscription, or you are a print subscriber who had access to our previous wesbite, then you already have an account here. Just reset your password if you have not yet logged in to your account on this new site.
If you are a current print subscriber and did not have a user account on our previous website, you can set up a free website account by clicking here.
Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing.
Please log in to continue |
Members of the Wright City Park Board, a citizen advisory group, questioned the city’s board of aldermen last week about what they described as slow progress toward a new park at Westwoods Road and Wildcat Drive.
The city purchased a 62-acre, wooded lot in 2018 for $1.2 million, using money from the sale of the city’s water and sewer utilities. In November 2019, the board of aldermen contracted an engineering firm to draft master plans for the park.
“Why such a long wait when it comes to getting an engineering firm? And then we have to wait another 18 months before we break ground,” questioned park board member Rob Swanson. “The voters voted on this in April 2018, so now we’re looking at three years before we actually break ground. ... There’s nothing showing the voters that something’s being done.”
Purchasing the land for the park was a key promise in the 2018 campaign to sell Wright City’s water and sewer infrastructure to Public Water Supply District 2 for $10.5 million. The sale required voter approval.
Swanson and four other members of the city’s park board brought their concern to the board of aldermen Feb. 13. They expressed desire for a physical sign or other indicator of progress to reassure residents the city is moving forward on the park.
“I don’t know if anyone knows anything about it. I’ve talked with various residents, and they don’t know where it’s at,” Swanson commented.
Mayor Dan Rowden offered his own reassurances to the park board members, saying the planning is a slow process.
“(The park) is one of the things I campaigned on. ... I’d rather have it sooner than later,” Rowden commented. “But we also have to go through the processes that are required of us as a city.”
In particular, Rowden said the city has to comply with legal requirements any time it is contracting work on the park project. For example, when selecting an engineering firm, the city had to send out a request for qualifications and then wait a set amount of time for responses, he explained.
Then came contract negotiations with the engineer and multiple stages of planning before any physical work ever begins, Rowden said.
“We can’t really do anything until we have that documentation and that planning done, because we have to know how much the cost is going to be,” he said.
In response to the park board’s request for a sign marking the location of the future park, Rowden said city staff don’t want to encourage entry into the area until it has been developed. The property is heavily wooded, and if someone goes in thinking it’s an open public park and gets injured, it could cause a legal liability, the mayor said.
Park board member Patsy Jones also requested a status update on the small park to be built outside the new city hall at 636 Westwoods Road.
“We have no listing of what (money) has been designated for our small park at city hall,” Jones said. She asked if the city has a breakout of how it will spend money for the project.
Rowden said the city won’t have an itemized breakdown for improvements at the city hall park until it receives bids for different purchases or work. He said progress should come with dry weather later this year.
“Last year was just so wet, we couldn’t get in to do anything,” Rowden commented.
