Three Cheers for our Parks!

Our beautiful parks.

There's still much to be done. We still need picnic shelters, parking lots, walkways, and swingsets, and that's just the beginning.

But tonight was about the end -- the end of the upgrades provided out of the parks bond.

I wish you had been there tonight to see the report the parks steering committee made to the City Council. I'm reproducing my part of the report below.

You would have been proud of me: I got through it without crying.

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Mayor and Members of the Council:

The last of the bonded upgrades to 27 city parks are now complete. Though our residents have been enjoying their parks for some time already, it is our pleasure formally to present the completed improvements to you now.

When I am finished with my remarks, Jay Bollwinkel of MGB+A and Kenny Hoggan, chair of the parks task force, will quantify what we did and what remains to be done.

But first, on behalf of the task force, the steering committee, and the people of American Fork, please allow me to thank you for your support of these upgrades.

In particular, our thanks to Mayor Barratt, who made parks a goal for his second term.

Thanks to Carl Wanlass, former city administrator, who prepared the way for the bond, and to his successors, Melanie Marsh and Cathy Jensen, for their help with implementation.

And finally, our thanks to Council Member Juel Belmont for her service to the parks steering committee as its City Council representative.

I took the opportunity last weekend to visit Hunter Park, the last of our parks to be completed. What I saw there took my breath away. I hope you will take the occasion to visit that park soon. You will feel that you are standing in God’s Country, a phrase Council Member Belmont has often reminded us of.

Here in our parks, we arrogant humans have added something important to God’s Country. In building these parks, we have made creation more accessible to the children and families of American Fork.

Those children and their families are the important thing I want you to notice when you visit our parks. Notice how many families are in our parks at any given time.

That’s my point tonight. This project has been as much about people as about parks. It is the culmination of years of work by many people. I will name some of them now:

• The mothers of the Hunter Park neighborhood, who started this project when they came to the City Council and said our children need parks for their social and physical well-being.
• The members of the many different neighborhoods and the Neighbors in Action committee who went door-to-door taking surveys and rallying support.
• The parks task force, which united the interests of the neighborhoods, the beautification and recreation committees, and the parks department into one concrete proposal
• The voters, who passed the bond by a 3-to-1 margin
• Members of the city staff: the planning, public works, and engineering departments, and, in particular, Cal Houghton and the parks department, whose cooperation and insight borne of 25 years in the city parks led to good, solid decisions
• The people of MGB+A and Allstate Construction, who contributed their professionalism, integrity, skill and vision
• Finally, hundreds of volunteers throughout the city. I still can’t get over our experience at Kimberly Park, where we called for 100 volunteers to plant trees, and the neighborhood sent us 175.

On December 2, 2004, the American Fork Citizen ran this letter by Seth Wynn, one of our residents. He said this:

I am very pleased to see all the new parks being put up. As a kid it is important to have a place to play and have fun. I am very glad American Fork City has spent time on building new parks. Good job!

That says it all.