Electric City requests extension on park timeline

Electric City will seek an extension for their Ice Age Park grant through the state’s Recreation & Conservation Office.

At the March 10 city council meeting, Mayor Diane Kohout told the council that the city received a letter from the RCO saying the city either needed to begin construction on the park before the end of March, or request the extension.

The delay comes from trying to get the cost of the park down.

The target cost for the park is a total of $515,000 to be paid in part with $257,500 in RCO grant money, and with a match from the city in that amount from their hotel/motel tax fund.

Construction bids for the park came in higher than the target of $380,000, with a low bid of $465,000 from Terrabella, Inc, a Spokane-based construction company.

That bid doesn’t leave enough money for additional park expenses the city needs to cover, such as building a restroom, and more.

Councilmember Cate Slater, who also serves on the city’s park committee as the council representative, said the committee would like to look into breaking down the construction contract into subcontracts to try to cut costs.

The council also voted to ask consultant Ken Van Voorhis from SPVV Landscape Architects how much it would cost to break the contract down into subcontracts.

Prior to discussing the extension, during the public comments period of the meeting, Kohout read aloud an email from citizen Ian Turner, at his request, regarding the park.

“I am concerned that outright opposition to a park, any park, is symptomatic of a greater opposition to change from a vocal few in our community,” Turner’s email read. “This vocal minority does not represent the whole of the community.”

Turner wrote that the city has a lot to offer, but “seriously lacks a public park with attractive features for children. … What do we want our city to become? Let’s invest in amenities, attract growth, and watch the small business ventures grow.”

Councilmember Cheryl Hoffman later said that she wasn’t opposed to the park, but was concerned with the cost of building it as well as the cost of maintaining it.

“I would like to see us work on another revenue stream for maintenance,” she said. “We cannot rely on bed and breakfast tax, because that’s not what it’s supposed to go for. … We need to find a way to pay for it that doesn’t rely on money that we don’t know if we’ll have.”

Asked for suggestions for additional revenue by Slater, Hoffman said the city could put a support measure on the ballot, or potentially sell sponsorship bricks at the park with someone’s name on it for $250 each, something she said she’d be willing to buy herself to help pay for the park.