Does Angie Arp Have Control of Downtown City Park?
News July 1, 2016
Well, it certainly seemed that way after the June 14th Blue Ridge City Council meeting. At that meeting Carlie Hammond had just finished talking about the grill when Ms. Arp gently interjected, “I would like to say something about the park.” She wanted to invite a playground equipment company up to Blue Ridge to take a look at the park, draw a design and give a price. Ms. Arp also suggested dipping into $150,000 in lodging tax revenue to add sparkle to the park and make it a spectacular civic monument that residents and visitors would admire for decades to come. The City Council voted that Ms. Arp could communicate with the playground equipment company to come up with a design for playground equipment layout and that the design should keep the grill in its current location.
Ms. Arp continued, “[It] will probably take some changes on what has been done so far. Does everyone understand that? There are going to be changes.” Her first suggestion was to redesign the newly landscaped portion of the park which is next to Church Street. She wanted to take out landscaping and sod, widen the area, and take down the flower bed corner/wall. The city has already spent $28,176.10 of grant money landscaping material in addition to money for grading and drainage. Council Member Rodney Kendall made the motion to allow Ms. Arp to take over the park project and use city employees to help with it as she sees fit. The four other members agreed with him.
Then, Mayor Whitener returned from her vacation. She had not been present at the meeting where Council Members voted Ms. Arp to head up the project. So, the City Council held a special-called meeting on June 30 to approve a new city employee health insurance plan and talk about the park. During the meeting, Mayor Whitener reiterated the contractual obligation that Blue Ridge has to fulfill the grant that is paying for a large park of the park renovation.
July 2015, the City of Blue Ridge received a $120,000 grant from the Vaughn-Jordon Foundation, Inc. to establish a “horticulture park”. The terms of the grant go from July 2015 to June 2018, although the foundation has highly encouraged the city to complete the project within one year. Due to the nature of the grant, the city decided to make half of the park into an arboretum featuring native species from north Georgia along with educational signs. That is the newly-landscaped portion of the park. With part of the park renovation paid for, the city sought out local organizations to fund the new playground construction. The playground is to be funded through donations from Kiwanis and ETC.
At the June 30th City Council meeting, Mayor Whitener told the City Council that it can’t make changes to the park that are outside the general scope of design which the city submitted to the Vaughn-Jordon Foundation when applying for the grant. That would terminate the conditions of the grant and thus the funding. She also told the Council that any portion of the grant not used for the stated purpose and/or close to the original intent would be taken out of the grant. For example, if the city decided to remove some of the landscaping paid for by the grant, the city would have to pay for the landscaping removal, pay for the plants that they didn’t use and have the money for the plants taken out of the grant.
Ms. Arp said that when the Council voted on beginning park renovation to begin in March, they assumed that the playground would be back within weeks, not months. “People want it back. It has been ample time,” said Ms. Arp. She went on to say, “Kids don’t care nothing about flowers.” She also told Mayor Whitener that the document submitted to the Vaughn-Jordon Foundation was a drawing, not a design. Council Member Bruce Pack reiterated his intent to see a bigger and better playground and to do what we need to do for the kids.
Mayor Whitener reminded the Council again that straying away from the design and ideas submitted in the grant would cause the city to lose the money. By the end of the meeting, Ms. Arp agreed that “we (the Council) are not going to tear up something that has already been done.” The Council agreed that the timeline for placing playground equipment in the park should be in August and that children will be able to slide, swing and scream in a fenced-in playground by September.
The new playground area will be in the area in bordered by the stage, the grill pit, the bathrooms and East Main Street. There will be a grassy area in front of the stage and the equipment will be along the perimeter of the grassy area. A fence, higher than the chain-link fence which encircled the earlier playground, will go around the area. The equipment inside the fence will appeal to the 2 to 10 year-old crowd. The Council Members and Mayor wanted to move the playground area because it was too close to Church Street and offered numerous possibilities to curious children to dart out into traffic. Outside the fence, the city expects to place equipment that the 10 and up crowd can use. For those way up from 10 years old, the city hopes to place adult-fitness playground equipment in the arboretum section of the park little by little.
The Council has avoided temporarily putting back in the old equipment for several reasons. Foremost, any equipment has to be stabilized in the ground, even if it would only be used for one or two months. Secondly, the equipment needs to have child-friendly accident material underneath it. Thirdly, when the city took down the equipment in March to renovate it, the city realized that, due to age, some of the equipment was of questionable safety.
FetchYourNews asked Council Member Rhonda Thomas why she had voted for Ms. Arp to take over the park renovation. Ms. Thomas said that the vote was to give Ms. Arp the authority to move forward with the conceptual plan to get the equipment. Ms. Thomas reiterated that she is making sure that people aren’t going to tear up what has already been done in the park.
Children and parents have made it very clear to the City Council that they want the playground back NOW! Mayor Whitener is expected to have a press-conference or press release about the park in the near future.
The article has been updated.
1 Comment
Mayor Whitener needs to realize the park downtown has been used for years. We want it back for our children and grandchildren. Quit the politics and get on with business.