Parks Director Justin Huss spoke of the challenges the Parks Department would face in the coming months that have resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic during Parks’ rescheduled regular meeting on April 28.
He said that the department was keeping up with maintenance tasks and that tax revenue will be delayed for two months, and that they need prepare for financial hardship. Huss presented the commission with information of expenses and revenue by Parks from April to July in 2019, and explained that expenses such as fuel and electricity would be dropping. He said he did not feel it was the right time to return to partial or full operation and deferred further comment until the agenda item, and they were looking at a possible $63,000 shortfall due to the virus-slowing revenue, and that was about what Parks had in reserves.
Tree planting is growing
Spring parks are being worked on as well as Basin Spring Park. Parks is working with the Walton Family Foundation on tree planting projects throughout parks, and the departments are working on an arboretum project as part of the Leatherwood Corridor project. Documents are being provided for legislative audit for 2019 financial and Huss ended his report saying he wanted to watch how State Parks handles reopening at the start of May.
The agenda moved straight to Parks’ post Covid-19 plan. Huss said that the first step of reopening would be RV parking and cabin rentals, which eliminates public restrooms that he described as the greatest difficulty to keep sanitary. He said they would bring staff back before reopening to prepare, and needed to decide on PPE and sanitization protocol as more parks’ amenities are opened. He said that they did not have the manpower of state parks and that would make it more difficult.
Huss did say that the shortfall was cursory and that the number included large purchases in 2019 that would not be present.
Commissioner Cameron Denoewer voiced that Parks needed to order cleaning supplies now since supplies are back ordered and would take extra time to be delivered. Huss agreed and said that there were options through the state to get supplies as well.
Final Items
- Commissioners discussed establishing a weekly report of goings on or workshops.
- At first commissioners thought they needed to approve payment to Windle & Associates. The money was already allocated, and the agenda item did not need approval.
- Nicky Boyette was approved to view financial statements from Cornerstone Bank to find information pertaining to his work in the Parks office.
- Third and fourth quarter 2019 financials were approved.
- There was no update to the Master Plan revision.
- Denoewer requested a workshop to go over the policies and procedures manual and asked commissioners to look through the manual and highlight what they felt was outdated. A workshop was scheduled on May 5 to discuss the manual and Master Plan updates.