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JAMESTOWN, NY (WNY News Now) – The Jamestown Mayor’s Office, after many years of promises, have brought forward a proposal to the Jamestown City Council to bring splash pads to the pearl city.
The proposal includes two locations for splash pads on opposite sides of the municipality, one at Jackson Taylor Park at the old skate park. The other would be located at Allen Park on the corner of West Virginia and Elizabeth Avenues.
“To ensure that our kids have equitable access to splash pads,“ explained Mayor Sundquist. “So as a part of that we looked at two locations, Jackson Taylor Park and Allen Park.”
Made with a four inch concrete base, users of the pads will press a button to start the water flow, at a rate of 45-gallons per minute, and operate on a time based system. The pads could also be manually shut down to conserve water.
“They come with different features,“ said Mayor Sundquist. “Some shooting out of the ground, some shooting up from various different trees, and structures, and things like that. They are all based on a button system, so you press the button and then it activates for a period of time, and then turns off.”
Concerns heard from the council included sanitary worries. To combat this, the two locations would not use a circulating water system.
“Circulating water system means we have a set amount of water that would be in there, that it would continue to circulate back and forth,” explained Mayor Sundquist. “We would then require New York State testing. We would have to have a bunch of additional staff in order to maintain it, and manage it. In talking with the engineers for this, they actually recommended that we go with just a fresh water system. So it would be water that you would see from your tap coming through whenever you pressed the button, And then would drain into our normal drainage system.”
Other things highlighted include the safety of the pads. Resident Doug Champ brought up how the CDC believes that splash pads are not safe, Mayor Sundquist responded by saying he would look into the matter.
Others also worry the locations will be subject to vandalism.
“It doesn’t matter what we do,“ said Parks Manager Dan Stone. “It doesn’t matter where it’s at, stuff’s going to get vandalized. We’ve seen it on the cameras walking into the doors of city hall. So I don’t think that should be used as a deterrent in anything we do.”
The two locations will cost $500,000 dollars in total, this includes the installation of the pads and extra contingency funds. But it will not include maintenance costs. The mayor is also waiting on a possible $100,000 dollar grant to go towards the half a million dollar price tag.
Two meetings are planned to be held to gauge public feedback on the splash pads. The first will be at the Allen Park Ice Arena on March 30 at 6:00 p.m. the other will be held on April 11 at Jackson Taylor Park’s pavilion at 6:00 p.m. alongside the HUD Action Plan community input meeting.
If funded this month, Mayor Sundquist says the pads could be in operation by early July.
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