Parks & Rec Department holds 4th town hall meeting

By LYNETTE SOWELL

Cove Leader-Press

Approximately one dozen residents showed up on Wednesday evening for the town hall meeting held by the Copperas Cove Parks & Recreation Department.

Parks & Recreation director Joe Brown spoke about the Parks and Recreation’s upcoming community activities and said the farmer’s market in City Park is set to kick off next Thursday, from 4-7 p.m. It will be located just west of Field #2, Brown said.

“It’s going to start small, so don’t show up and send me an email that there weren’t 300 vendors,” Brown quipped. “Farmers markets are hard to start, but you have to start somewhere.” As of Wednesday afternoon, seven vendors had signed up for spots.

The department is already looking ahead to its summer aquatics program and is already booking the pool for private parties, with a schedule of summer events at the pool also on schedule. Copies of the park’s quarterly guide, “Cove Buzz”, were available as well.

Brown gave an update about upcoming park improvements set to begin this summer and to continue through 2021. BSP Engineers has completed its surveys of all eight of the city’s parks and a request for proposals (RFP) for park design development has gone out for all five years of improvements.

BSP brought up the idea of tackling the improvements by project type instead of park by park, to save costs, something Brown brought to the council after the original plan was laid out last summer.

“$4.1 million dollars isn’t a lot of money for park improvements when you haven’t spent $3 on a park in 25 years,” Brown said.

The city will likely start bidding out the projects in June or July, Brown said, with work to begin later in the summer on improving the parking lots at parks, as well as sidewalks, walking trails and monument signs.

Brown said the benefit is being able to touch multiple parks, instead of one or two.

Next fiscal year, the restroom renovations are slated for City Park, South Park as well as High Chaparral Park, and any of the improvements from 2017 that have not been completed.

A question was posed by an individual watching via Facebook if there were plans to further develop Ogletree Gap Park. Brown replies yes—however, the resounding comments from the community survey was that “we need to fix what we have.”

Brown said the city will learn by mid-May if it is the recipient of a grant from Texas Parks & Wildlife, for which the city would have to provide some matching funds.

Discussion also involved the Hills of Cove Golf Course, with Brown stating the course will be having new cart paths installed.

On hand Wednesday evening was the firm of Frieze and Nichols, which is working on the design plan for the golf course’s cart path renovations.