Mayor outlines parks inventory and repair push; Dwight Park gets volunteer overhaul

Mayor Ford told the Gadsden City Council on July 29 that city staff and volunteers are conducting an inventory of municipal parks to identify which sites the city will maintain and which may be decommissioned or left without investment. "We have over, I believe, 50 something parks," Mayor Ford said, and the city intends to focus resources on parks it will keep so they can be updated, repainted and receive new playground equipment. He said the first project was at Dwight Park, where Church of the Highlands held a volunteer serve day and city personnel then spent additional days improving the site. Mayor Ford said crews and volunteers gave out refreshments and staged community activities during the Dwight Park work day; he described the effort as part of a broader program to "make them usable" and to avoid leaving parks "half done." He said the next parks on the list include sites in Councilwoman Menacher's area and later the East Side. The mayor did not provide an exhaustive list of parks to be retained or a capital budget for the work during the meeting. He said the goal is to concentrate limited resources on parks the city chooses to keep and to make those parks useful for neighborhoods.