Ceremonial groundbreaking

The ceremonial groundbreaking ceremony for three new ball fields in Brookside Park took place on Friday afternoon. The three fields take up most of the space between SR 114 on the north and the newest section of Weston Cemetery on the south. They will be known as the Blacker Fields in honor of the late Rex Blacker, whose trust donated about a third of the money that the Parks for People Campaign has raised. The layout of the fields can be seen here.

Moving dirt will begin very soon. The soccer games were using this area for Saturday games will be moved to the Staddon Field area. Soccer is having an inconvenient year but next year they should be enjoying first-class facilities. In other park news, outdoor exercise equipment has been delivered to the new walking trail in the Staddon/Monnett complex and will be installed next week. 

There are several more park events coming up. The Scare Crow Trail will return this year as will the Fall Festival. Plus there will be one more trash-can painting event, this one for adults only. It will be a sip and paint event.

The City Council met on Monday morning and because I was not paying close enough attention to what was on the agenda, I missed it. On Friday I stopped by City Hall to find out what had happened and found that the Clerk-Treasurer's office is now in what had been the police department half of the building. The staff is very happy with their new quarters.

According to the unapproved minutes, the meeting lasted about 25 minutes. Bids for the Eger Substation Project were opened and the low bid was approved. The electrical department has been having problems with the relays there (I do not know what relays are) and wanted to move them in the structure that is there. 

The Council approved waiving the permit fee for the construction of the Blacker ball fields.  Then the Council renewed discussion of a proposal to upgrade the City's computer server equipment. The Council approved their IT consultant's recommendation to lease the equipment so that they can get on a two-year replacement schedule.

Road work funded by the Community Crossings grant will begin on September 9.

I missed a meeting in June and for a while the minutes were not posted on-line. I only recently found that they had gotten posted, but had the wrong date. The June meeting that I did not attend can be reviewed here.

Earlier this week Ayda's had an open house for their new banquet room and outdoor patio. This space was previously not being used and was completely renovated. The room will hold about 75 people, as will the outdoor seating. 

The bricks for the patio and the service counter were once part of the Johnny Rusk building that was across the street. Currently the County owns the lot but with the recent purchase of the former PNC building, they may be willing to sell it.

Two other people were viewing the remodeled facilities while I was there and one of them commented that he remembered when the far eastern part of the building had housed a grocery store. I had heard that at one time the building had an ice cream shop/creamery but had not heard about the grocery store business.

I asked a high school teacher about the paintings on the school parking lot. There are a number of other schools in the US that have done this, including one that is nearby. The students pay for a parking spot, which they then decorate, though the design must be approved. The money collected goes to the Student Council to support its programs during the year. The student who pays for the parking spot is the only one who is supposed to use that spot during the school year. At the end of the year, the lot will be repainted and a new senior class will be able to claim their parking spots. Checking the Internet, I found that some of the local paintings were copies of paintings that had been done elsewhere. 

Did you notice that a couple weeks ago some City streets had an oily substance on them? This is a sealer, meant to seal the road from moisture.

Early this week the chipper was by the City's brush pile on Mattheson. I have not gotten back to see if it processed the summer's collection of branches.

Also this week, SJC was adding water to the reflecting pond. I wonder what their water bill is. They no longer pump their own but now buy City water.

This weekend the Fair Oaks Farms will have free apple picking in the new orchard. There is a limit of one bag of apples per person, so a lengthy trip would not be worthwhile.