Tooele City Parks and Recreation Director Brian Roth presented a “long range parks plan” to the city council during a work meeting Wednesday night.
In that plan are a number of concerns Roth listed regarding city parks and other related facilities the city council faces now and in the future.
Those concerns include insufficient irrigation systems, broken playground equipment, inadequate storage for equipment and golf carts, dilapidated buildings, a deteriorating railroad museum, and future cemetery expansion.
“One of the bigger issues is we have playground equipment that is 14-18 years old at several parks,” Roth said. “They are old enough that some of the parts needed to fix them are not even made any more. We will have to pull some of these playgrounds out because they are old and not safe. They cost from $60,000 to $80,000 each to replace. We already pulled one out at Linear Park in Overlake.”
Mayor Patrick Dunlavy said he requested a “long range parks” plan be presented to the council as the city considers future budgeting.
“The reason we wanted this presentation now is that we’re in a state of transition,” Dunlavy told the council. “In four months, we’ll have some changes here, so it was important for you to have this information.
“All our needs will never be met,” he added. “You will need to prioritize the needs of the city during the budgeting process. Do you pay your employees and give them benefits, or do you replace playground equipment?”
Roth said the report was an evaluation of the condition of parks’ infrastructure, and projecting future upgrades and repairs.
“In our projected plan, a very rough estimate that we put together would cost $5-6 million,” Roth said.
Tooele City’s current fiscal-year budget has $1.04 million for parks and park areas. The city’s overall budget is $43.3 million.
Roth briefly discussed needs for the cemetery that has a current fiscal-year budget of $351,200.
“The cemetery irrigation system is 50 years old,” he said. “We do have design work completed for improvements for the cemetery, and have made improvements to provide for ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act).”
Roth said that in 8-12 years the cemetery will run out of burial plots and the city will need to find additional property for cemetery use.
He also talked about irrigation needs for all the parks.
“Some of the newer parks have solid irrigation systems that function reasonably well, others have older systems,” Roth said. “It is hard to manage and use water efficiently with old systems.”
He mentioned a possible citywide central irrigation control system for parks run by a computer as something to consider for the future.
Roth said shop and equipment storage space is also limited.
“We pay thousands of dollars for equipment and it’s sitting outside all winter and all summer,” he said. “That makes it tough.”
Roth mentioned that the city would like to construct new buildings at the Red Delpapa and Dow James baseball parks.
Roth said the clubhouse at Oquirrh Hills Golf Course was great when there were nine holes and the city owned 30 golf carts. But now there are 18 holes and 80 golf carts.
“We could use storage for those extra golf carts,” he said.
Tooele City spent $75,000 to fix cracks in the bottom of the Pratt Aquatic Center Pool last February. It also cost $17,000 to replace the water slide at the leisure pool. The overall budget for the pool is about $750,000, Roth said back in February.
The parks director said the dock around the railroad museum is rotting out and falling apart. Also, the tennis courts at Elton Park are no longer usable. If the courts were rebuilt, it would cost $300,000.
“It’s an eyesore right now,” he said. “Our five-year plan does not include rebuilding the tennis courts.”
Roth said some people have suggested building pickleball courts or a combination of two tennis courts and six pickleball courts.