Park bathrooms in Jackson are priority

The Board of Aldermen and city staff have spent a considerable amount of time this past year discussing and working on plans for a new bathroom in the park.

The addition of a new bathroom was picked as the top priority by the park board. In discussions with the girls' softball league they expressed a need for additional bathroom facilities for the area of the softball fields. The girls' softball league is made up of parents and other interested adults, and they manage the league in cooperation with the park board and our park's director Shane Anderson.

The bathrooms at the swimming pool with additional portable bathrooms were not adequate to support the visitors and teams at softball games, especially during tournaments. Honestly, these bathrooms were not representative of the quality of facilities we would like to offer our citizens and guests to our park.

The next piece of the puzzle came into place with discussions with the Jackson R-2 School District. As part of the cooperation agreement when the Clark Sports and Recreation Complex formed, which included the land around the Civic Center and the JCOB baseball field and the baseball field itself, funding for the improvement of the softball field was included. John Link's, Jackson R-2 School District superintendent, desire was to assure the softball field which is part of the City of Jackson Park System was representative of Class 4 Missouri high school softball facility.

Together we agreed on upgrading of the fencing, new bleachers, a new press box, and finally a new bathroom facility. The City of Jackson agreed on building the bathroom facility that would not only serve the softball fields but also the area of the park along Parkview Street. The city also decided to use the funds which we received as part of the casino money annual distribution to partially fund the facility. Plans were to add parking to this bathroom and design it so a concession stand could be added in the future.

An architecture firm was hired to design the facility and then requests for bids went out to area companies. This was the easy part.

As you may have read in the paper, the bids came in much higher than anticipated resulting in the total cost being over $300,000 for the facility. A considerable amount of the cost is the running of sewer line to the bathroom and then adding a lift station.

Being financially responsible for the citizen's monies is a major part of the board of aldermen's duties. The board felt the total was too high, so the bids were rejected. We are certainly much smarter about this project and have more options than were available several months ago.

The plan is now to review alternatives for a more basic facility, but still the same size, possibly including prefabricated units that have been used in Perryville and Cape Girardeau. Also, we will review the previous bids to assure we have uncovered all opportunities for cost reductions.

It is frustrating when plans are delayed because of the challenges of cost or construction issues. But I am confident we will be able to deliver this priority for our park system. Our 253 acres of park, which includes the swimming pool and Civic Center, is an asset of the city we can be proud of, and we do want to keep it that way. The citizens over the years have voted to fund our park system with specific sales and property taxes that is about $800,000 a year. This money funds our daily operations, but it is still a challenge to budget for new capital improvement projects of bathrooms, new ball fields and other additions. We will continue to strategically plan to expand our park offerings while maintaining the quality of what we have.

Dwain Hahs serves as mayor of the city of Jackson. He can be reached at mayorhahs@jacksonmo.org.