By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Wood County Park District plans to spend nearly $600,000 next year to give local residents more ways to spend time outside – on bikes, on water, on trails, on boulders, and on a farm.
The capital budget approved Tuesday by the park district commissioners will pay to create a mountain bike trail and to smooth out a bumpy section of the Slippery Elm Trail. The budget will pay for prairie seeding and replacement of aging boardwalks. It will pay for an archery range shooting platform and a barn at the park district’s historic farm.
Very little will be dedicated to Buttonwood Park, in Perrysburg Township, which was overrun by massive ice chunks from the Maumee River in spring flooding earlier this year. The ice floe scoured trees in the park, moved the parking lot gravel, and left debris in the camping area.
Some “spoils” from the ice jam have created a levee of sorts at the nearby horse farm by Buttonwood Park. That could lead future flooding to be channeled into the park, Wood County Park District Director Neil Munger said.
So Munger suggested that repairs and improvements to the park be delayed until after the thaw next year.
“We’ve been very careful not to put money in here till we know what will last,” he said.
Following is a list of money set aside in the 2020 capital budget for each county park:
- Buttonwood: $1,000 for miscellaneous.
- Cedar Creek: $4,000 for planter box replacements and miscellaneous.
- Fuller Preserve: $500 for miscellaneous.
- William Henry Harrison: $29,000 for repairs to house on new property purchase, prairie seeding, and miscellaneous.
- Headquarters: $28,900 for water softener system, driveway grading and paving, and miscellaneous.
- W.W. Knight Preserve: $8,000 for boardwalk replacement and miscellaneous.
- Otsego Park: $73,500 for main hall window replacement, overlook painting and flooring, and miscellaneous.
- Wood County Historical Center: $24,300 for archery range electric installation, archery range sidewalk, archery range shooting platform, and miscellaneous.
- Zimmerman School: $11,500 for plaster repairs and painting, replace entrance, and miscellaneous.
- Slippery Elm Trail: $212,100 for repaving portion south of Gypsy Lane Road; tar and chip drive and parking lot at Cricket Frog Cove; or Rudolph Savanna work on pole barn doors, roof and electric, a shelter, parking lot, mountain bike trail construction, and miscellaneous.
- Baldwin Woods: $14,000 for a driveway to the new property, gates for the new drive, and miscellaneous.
- Carter Historic Farm: $77,900 for a loafing shed, tar and chip driveway and parking lot, barn construction and miscellaneous.
- Bradner Preserve: $22,000 for installation of two culverts to extend the trail system, and miscellaneous.
- Beaver Creek Preserve: $3,000 for miscellaneous.
- Reuthinger Preserve: $14,900 for lean-to lighting, carpet removal, exhaust fan, carport, and miscellaneous.
- Sawyer Quarry Preserve: $73,000 for interpretive displays and miscellaneous.
