The Winamac Park Board has decided not to provide additional guidance to its advisory council. Park Board President Courtney Poor presented some proposed guidelines during last week’s meeting.
Board member Pat Bawcum felt one of them was a bit too restrictive. “The way it’s written, it makes it sound like if we say it to be so, they need to agree with it, and I don’t like that,” she said. “I think that’s telling them what to think, and the reason we have an advisory board is so we hear other opinions.”
Rather than revising the proposed guidelines, board members decided that the resolution that established the advisory council was adequate for explaining how it should operate. However, Poor did request that members be given terms, and that those terms should be staggered. “You guys are volunteers out of the goodness of your heart,” he said, “but folks will be more apt to volunteer for a project or for a limited amount of time than just have something open-ended and you’ve got to die to get off the board.”
Since it was formed last year, the advisory council has been leading various projects. Advisory council member Dave Bennett says the group has been promoting the parks by sharing historic photos on its Facebook page. “We’ve got a lot of old pictures in there,” he said. “There are some really neat old pictures, but we’re always looking for more because people love those old pictures.”
Some other projects the advisory council has been working on include the installation of a bag dispenser near the dog park and a Town Park cleanup event on Earth Day.
