Tawney Crowley, volunteered at the annual Helping Our Parks Project last year. She is pictured here installing bird spikes on the baseball field bleachers, to keep birds from roosting on the bleachers.
The Wrangell Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee met last week, Jan. 15, to discuss the recent series of winter activities, as well as to continue planning for the upcoming Helping Our Parks Project. Over winter break, the city and other community organizations came together to put on a series of events to give Wrangell youth stuff to do while school was not in session. According to Committee Member Haig Demerjian, the events were quite successful.
"I was just reading the director's report, there, and it sounds like the youth activities were a real smashing success," Demerjian said. "There were 560 participants or something?"
"Not 550 different people but 550, sorry 560, acts of participation," Parks and Recreation Director Kate Thomas clarified. "I would say that only includes the efforts that were organized, or at least managed by parks and rec in the media release. That doesn't include things like the Legion Christmas party, any bazaars that happened at the Nolan Center, or even the numbers for the Nolan Center's regularly scheduled movie 'Frozen'. I'm sure that there were other events facilitated in town during that time. If you counted the Nolan Center's regular hours, the school, or the library's regular hours, I'm sure that we're upwards of 1,000 acts of participation."
During the meeting, the committee also talked about the upcoming Helping Our Parks Project. The HOP Project is an annual tradition for the parks and rec department, bringing together community volunteers each spring to renovate and clean up one of Wrangell's parks. Last year, the third annual HOP Project, saw 61 volunteers donate a combined total of 211 hours to renovate Volunteer Park, doing jobs from cutting down alders, to cleaning dugouts, to installing bird spikes on bleachers, to installing a new net at the batting cage.
This year, Thomas said she had hoped they could use the HOP Project to take down old playground equipment at Angerman Park by the library. The problem is scheduling, she said. She was not sure they could get the new playground equipment, to replace the old equipment, into town in time for the HOP Project.
"I am almost certain that we won't be ready to do that in April, because I don't want to decommission the play equipment before we are ready to mobilize construction," Thomas said. "Something that would be far worse than an old playground is no playground."
The committee agreed that it was best to stay flexible about what the 2020 HOP Project would be dedicated to. Some of the other ideas tossed around included just having a more "low-key" event this year dedicated to cleaning the parks instead of renovation work, or brush clearing at the viewing platform at Petroglyph Beach, or touching up Shoemaker Park, or even cleaning up the cemetery. Thomas said they should try to aim for a final decision on the HOP project in February.
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