By Stephen Smoot
At last week’s County Commission meeting James Richards, Deputy Director of Harrison County Parks and Recreation, provided an update on what that organization has done in recent months.
Richards opened by saying that a big part of his job lies in “finding out what people want.” That includes finding family fun events to keep people busy despite the cold and occasional snowy day.
Some ideas for winter recreation includes trivia, cornhole, line dancing, and flea markets. He also mentioned Hot Wheels racetracks, to which he admitted “it’s a big thing. I did not know that.”
Richards also informed the Commission that “most of this stuff doesn’t cost the parks any money. It’s organic. People are coming out” because “people want something to do consistently.”
Over the winter, crews have remained busy where needed to replace plumbing, floors, and other indoor work. Richards explained when describing different projects that using county employees when possible and hiring out only when necessary has saved significant funds.
For example, he stated that they installed a concrete bathroom on park land near Spelter for less than $10,000.
Additionally, Parks and Recreation spent $900 to replace electrical and plumbing at Wallace Park, over and above the personnel and equipment that they already have in house.
“We’ve cleaned that park up,” shared Richards, who went on to say that “the only problem we have out there is parking.” He then outlined a goal of expanding the current capacity of 10 to at least 50 spaces and said “we can put drainage in there.”
Hinkle asked if they would need to remove an old sycamore tree to expand parking. Richards said they would, explaining that “it’s relatively old. The limbs are falling off of it.”
Richards spoke next about ideas for improvements to Summit Park. He said “we’d like to utilize that lower field on the right for general purposes . . . a bunch of activities that people want to do.”
He and Hinkle then discussed improvements to the electrical capacity for the concession stand and new LED lighting at the baseball field. They agreed that each field should have its own separate wiring.
At the end of the presentation, Thomas warned that some of the recent activities had taken a less than family friendly turn. She specifically noted obscene gestures and foul language used during wrestling events. Richards promised they would “keep an eye on that.”
Thomas also stated that she did not want activities to interfere with the CEOS group that uses the facility as well and that CEOS, a community service organization, should remain a priority in scheduling.