2019 was a good year for the Warsaw Parks and Recreation Department.
At their board meeting on Tuesday, Parks Superintendent Larry Plummer gave a review of the year and stated that the department accomplished many of their goals in the five-year master plan. Included in this was new playground equipment in Kelly Park, in which they were able to purchase $90,000 worth of equipment for just $47,000 thanks to a grant from Sinclair Recreation. A parking lot was also put in for the sledding hill there.
In Lucerne Park, the amphitheater was rebuilt and they continue to be in the process of making the cabins there ADA accessible, two of them are complete. Kiddieland also saw improvements with the replacement of tables and concrete, while the benches and trash cans saw a facelift.
Other projects for the Parks Department included preparation for the Mary Ellen Rudisel Memorial art piece that will go up by city hall along Center Street. The Parks employees also relandscaped around the city hall plaza and put new flooring, windows, siding and countertops in at the Fireman’s Building. About 3,300 feet of splitrail fencing at Lucerne Park was finished up in 2019, Plummer said.
Through countless hours of dedication of the Parks employees, he said over 220,000 lights, 40 figurines and two new pixel trees were put up at Central Park for the Christmas wonderland. “I have not heard any negative comments about it. They’ve all been positive,” Plummer said.
On the Pike Lake campground, Plummer said they had another “productive year” with 37 seasonal sites and six non-seasonal sites.
“We were at 98% capacity with 7,267 total nights possible to rent and we rented 7,152 nights,” Plummer said.
Parks Maintenance Director Shaun Gardner gave a playground audit and said the playgrounds were in good shape. They had fourteen “Priority 3” incidents, or ones that could cause minor injury and repaired when time allows. Most of those incidents were from safety servicing. There were no “Priority 1” or “Priority 2” incidents.
It was an up year for program and event attendance according to the review from Recreation Director Sheila Wieringa. 23,921 people participated in activities last year and money brought in from non-reverting programs and events was $16,936.75, up roughly $3,000 from 2018. Event sponsorships were up about $4,500.
Total revenue was up $7,300.
