While the city's Garrison Park redevelopment
project has a signed grant contract with the state, engineers and a grant
consultant and work is progressing on design and engineering work,
council's action at last weeks called meeting put off passing the
third and final reading on a budget amendment funding work that has
taken place during the last part of the 2016-17 fiscal year.
So far the council has not canceled the
project, the work or the grant but only tabled the approval of a
budget amendment pending additional information.
City council called meeting-sitting at table L-R
Danny Wyatt, Pamala Harris, Mayor James Mayberry
and J. H. Graham
The discussion mainly concerned the
fence that is currently surrounding the park that the grant
application indicated would be removed. The LPRF (Local Parks and
Recreation Fund) has said the fence can be replaced but are holding a
position that the current must be removed as it was part of the grant
application they approved.
During discussion, councilman J. H.
Graham said that his phone calls over the previous two weeks
indicated that if the fence had to be removed and field A was lost
that his constituents were in favor of discontinuing the renovations
until coming up with a better solution. He added that finding a ball
park was difficult in the city of Crossville.
Concept for Garrison Park re-development plan
Garrison Park entrance and fence
City manager Greg Wood said that the
city would have the use of the ball fields that belong to the local school
system at the two high schools if they were needed. It was also
clarified that field A was not being removed and was not part of the
current grant or renovation plan.
The fence remains the main sticking
point as Graham said “I have a real problem with taking down a
perfectly good fence and building it back.”
Councilman Danny Wyatt said that there
was 4000 feet of chain link in the park that he said was “somewhere
in the neighborhood of $100,000. “I'd like for a good level headed
person to tell me why you would take a perfectly good fence down and
create a safety concern,” commented Wyatt.
Jim Young Reporter is sponsored by
Manager Wood explained that the current
trend in parks is to have open access and not have fences all the way
around them to encourage access to the park from all sides.
Wyatt said, “I'd like to make a
motion to table this until someone can tell us why we have to take
the fence down.
Questions arose on the fact that
the city has already signed contracts for work done by the
engineering firm Lose and Associates and Community Partners for grant
administration. City attorney Will Ridley said that the city would
have to pay for work that has already been done by the firms if the
city were to back out of those contracts.
Questions about whether backing out of
the grant would cause the city to be ineligible for additional such
recreation grants was also discussed but manager Woods planned to
meet with representatives of the city of Livingston for additional clarification
on some of the issues since they just completed a similar grant.
Councilwoman Pamala Harris indicated that the comments that they city could not get another grant didn't make sense to her since grants are usually awarded on a point system. Said Wood,
“If you don't close out one grant then it may be that you are not eligible to get
another one.”
Wyatt's motion was approved with 4
votes in favor.
A motion to approve the year end budget
amendments was approved by the council with little discussion and a
unanimous vote of the council members present. Councilman Scot
Shanks was out of town for the meeting.
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