Minutes February 4, 2009: Playground upgrades

Fine master Erik Tremblay was up to speed with his fine session and he did a fine job for the club.

Erik introduced our guests for this evening: Bob McFarland, Director of Community Services in Woodstock (he speaks instead of Dan Major, supervisor of parks) and Tony  DeJongh, representative for A.B.C. Recreation Ltd.

Tony started with a very well prepared presentation about a number of possibilities for update suggestions for the parks in Woodstock. There are 38 playground sited in the City. He gave the example of Brampton Park and Van Sittard Park. Now the swings at Brampton are 50-60 years old. You can install and EVOS and playbooster.

This is an example of an EVOS

This is an example of a playbooster:

At Van Sittard there is an old splash pad which is pretty basic. Could be upgraded to a more sophisticated one. There was a question what the cost would be approximately. Tony mentioned that that will be including excavating and all other costs between $ 125,000-$150,000.

Gibson asked what the costs were to operate such a splash pad. One customer of Tony did some research in that. You have costs for recirculating the water and testing plus the labour involved: $ 6,000-$7,000 per year.

Bob continued the presentation. Paul Turner asked about the parking around the park at Van Sittard if there is such a nice splash pad. Bob mentioned that this was a problem because a nice splashpad will be very popular. That is why a splash pad installation is more suitable for Brampton Park.

Paul Leroy mentioned that it was maybe cheaper to install at Van Sittard because there is already water. Bob said that because of age everything has to be replaced anyway.

Bob also mentioned the trails in Woodstock. They remain very important to the people and along the trails you can add Fitness Equipment for the people to do all kinds of exercises along their way. This is getting very popular especially among 50-70 year old people. There is already approval for 9 fitness stations in South Side Park.

Summarized: in the new subdivisions there is money budgeted for new equipments in the parks so that everything is up to date. In all the older parks in Woodstock there is a lot of older equipment. Funds are limited to upgrade and there is lots of opportunity for service clubs in the community to be visible in upgrading play equipment in the parks.

Rama asked about safety. New equipment has the highest safety standards. City also had two Safety Constructors who check the equipment and update or even remove if equipment is not safe.

Tony finished the presentation by mentioning that there are turn key projects for landscape structures or they are community build with a supervisor from A.B.C. Recreation Ltd. The last option saves about 15-20 % on labour costs.

Rama thanks Tony and Bob for there very informative presentation.

Meeting adjourned at 8.00 pm