BOSCOBEL - The city of Boscobel is moving forward on its next, 10-year comprehensive plan to guide the development and improvement of the city’s outdoor recreation facilities after the Common Council passed a resolution to that effect Monday night.
“We do a new comprehensive plan every ten years,” explained Director of Public Works Mike Reynolds. “The last one expired in 2019 and it needs to be updated. This is a pretty large document at over 50 pages and there’s a lot of good information in it.”
The purpose of the plan is to guide the future growth and development of Boscobel’s park system and outdoor recreation facilities, including:
• Continue to provide excellent maintenance to Boscobel’s parks and recreational facilities;
• Develop mew parks and recreational facilities that meet the needs of Boscobel residents throughout the calendar year;
• Continue to efficiently utilize existing funding streams and find new funding solutions for Boscobel’s parks systems.
There are several components to each of those goals, such as increasing handicap accessibility, updating and replacing equipment, hosting regional sporting and recreation events and continuing to cooperate and coordinate work with the school district, as well as county and state agencies.
Initial schedule
An initial Capital Improvement Schedule has already been established. Most of the high priority projects identified are relatively small, like repairing a drinking fountain in Kronshage Park ($200) or replacing basketball hoops at Westside Park ($300). But there’s also the replacement of the backstop, dugouts and fence around the ball diamond at Fireman’s Park ($25,000), and the big one, major improvements at the Floyd Von Haden Boat Landing ($1.175 million).
Moving forward with the comprehensive plan was approved by the Park Board earlier this month and will now move on to consideration and debate by a steering committee comprised of Mayor Steve Wetter, Alderman Roger Brown, DPW Mike Reynolds, City Administrator Misty Molzof, Library Director Janelle Miller, Gundersen Boscobel Administrator Theresa Braudt, Boscobel Developers Ramona Kord, School Board President Todd Miller, business owner Ray Saint and citizen members Angela O’Brien, Kay Woodke and Robin Baumeister of the Chamber of Commerce.
The steering committee will be putting together a Public Participation Plan, a Community Survey, and announce times and locations of upcoming public meetings. Those are tentatively scheduled for May and June, five in total, and the plan is looking to be completed by November/December 2021.
COVID carryover
You could call them COVID carryover funds. The city carried $91,550 in funds budgeted for 2020 into 2021, mainly due to reduced spending associated with the coronavirus pandemic.
Those funds included:
• Pool: $20,000
• Public Works: $20,000
• Police: $20,000
• Recreation: $10,000
• Library: $6,500
• Parks: $6,000
“The reason there was an overage was COVID,” said Molzof. “The library was way down, parks were way down. We also had $50,000 in COVID relief money, so that really helped.”
The Council approved carrying over the $91,550 and spending it on the following projects:
• Airport: $5,000 to cover hangar project budgeted in 2020 but not yet used.
• Library: $6,500 in unused funds due to COVID-19 to county funds to make up for loss in future revenues due to decreased library use.
• Parks: $6,000 to cover maintenance costs and equipment upgrades.
• Police: $20,000, including $15,000 for vehicle replacement to capital expenditures spent in 2020, and $5,000 for additional vehicle expenditures in 2021.
• Pool: $24,000 to cover future maintenance costs and possible capital costs.
• Public Works: $20,000 to cover street maintenance costs.
• Recreation: $10,000 to cover improvements to equipment, fields and recreation equipment.
