The Starkville Parks and Recreation Department recently hosted the State of the Parks Initiative to allow the community to give feedback about Starkville's parks.
Throughout February and the beginning of March, meetings were held in each ward, allowing residents to address the needs of their parks with the Parks and Recreation Department.
"We were able to identify some short term things that we didn't necessarily know about and really see what's important to people," interim Director of Parks and Recreation Gerry Logan said. "It's hard to get a sense when we just send out surveys what folks really care about in the parks and what things we can do to make an impact. It was good to get to do this face-to-face."
Logan said while the department can't promise to make every improvement, the goal of the initiative was to let Starkville residents know that the department wants to hear from them and they want to make as many improvements to parks as they can.
Logan said bathroom cleanliness was one of the concerns of citizens during the meetings.
"We have a couple of restrooms that are very heavily utilized, like over at McKee mPark," he said. "We have people clean every single day, but the thing about it is, if we have a cleaning service come in at 10 a.m. and then people come in after work in the afternoon, it may be dirty again."
Logan said the department plans to adjust the timing of restroom cleaning to help make the restrooms cleaner.
Another issue during the initiative was the lack of parks in some areas of Starkville.
"There's some areas that we just don't have parts like the southeast part of town down South Montgomery," Logan said. "We just don't have anything down there.
We had a good meeting down at the country club and go over that. It's good to at the very least to tell folks we understand."
Logan said the department would love to add another park, but that would increase the department's already full work load, which would require adding more staff to the department.
Logan said at the Ward 5 meeting, a hole in the fence at the dog park at McKee Park was brought to his attention, and the next day he patched the hole in the fence.
He said the department has installed a new water fountain with a water bottle filler at the Sportsplex, renovated the softball field at J.L. King Park and added dog waste dispensers and bags at McKee Park.
There are plans to install a water fountain and fix sidewalks at J.L. King Park, and a disc golf course will be added later on.
"At J.L. King Park, that will be our first disc golf course in our city park system," Logan said.
Also at J.L. King Park, the new playground equipment has been built, and the department is working to get it opened to the public. The surfacing on the playground has to be filled before it can be opened. Logan said weather postponed the project, and it should be completed in about a week.
"The reason we did this was to complement the other big things we have going on," Logan said. "The comprehensive plan for our department was done back in 2016, and this initiative was meant to piggyback off of that. The big thing with the comprehensive plan was getting feedback and identifying needs for the department, but the main difference between that and this initiative was we wanted to meet in different locations in the city. We wanted to get out and meet where the folks were they live."
Logan said another reason behind hosting the State of the Parks Initiative is the potential purchase of land at the Sportsplex for tournaments.
"That's great, but what about the people who don't use the sportsplex?" Logan said. "What about the people in town that don't necessarily benefit from that. So we wanted to be able to talk about what we are doing for the entire city, not just one area."