The Winamac Kiwanis Club’s offer to help buy new playground equipment for the Town Park has led to an outpouring of support from other town organizations. The Kiwanis Club hopes to contribute about $4,000, using a mix of its own money and grant funding. But when town officials researched costs, they learned that money wouldn’t go as far as they’d originally thought.
Now, some other groups are stepping up to help, according to Winamac Park Board President Courtney Poor. “The American Legion has apparently made a commitment – I’m not going to say the dollar amount because there’s no verification on that – but to donate monies, we’ll say, up to $2,000 for the playground equipment for the little kids’ area of the playground,” Poor said during Thursday’s park board meeting.
On top of that, Park Board Secretary Kim Burke said the Winamac Eagles also want to donate. “They have their meeting next week,” she explained. “I know kind of an amount they were talking about, but then my dad’s memorial contributions were also made to them, so they are going to donate all that, as well. So I don’t have a definite figure yet, but I gave you guys a quote of kind of what I found. I think, at this point, it would be safe to say we could set a budget of like $10,000, and, probably, we’ll get all of that in donations.”
To figure out what kind of playground equipment the park should get, Poor met with officials from the community’s Head Start program, to discuss its equipment. “They said anything that moves is used,” Poor explained. “They love the bouncy things that they have, and it’s basically everything that is in that particular facility is used.”
Board members voted Thursday to formally pursue the replacement of the toddler playground equipment, with the goal of raising a minimum of $10,000 through donations. Poor said he was very encouraged by the community and organizational support for the project.
