Hayden Veterans Commission reports on Memorial Day service, plans searchable memorial-brick map

Ian Cosby, chair of Hayden City’s Veterans Commission, briefed the council Tuesday on the commission’s recent activities and plans, including post-event improvements and a searchable map of memorial bricks.

“We ensured that all the resources and everything was taken care of, all the planning for the Memorial Day service,” Cosby said, adding the commission secured an honor guard, Taps and a bridal team for both the submariner ceremony and the main ceremony. He said the speaker for this year’s program received strong positive feedback.

Cosby outlined steps the commission wants to sustain and to improve. He said the commission will continue curb seating for better visibility, develop continuity documents for future ceremonies and work with the city to keep those documents centrally available to city staff.

A future project Cosby described is a publicly available, indexed and searchable map of the memorial bricks in front of the memorial. “We’re developing a plan for creating a publicly available map of the memorial bricks that are out front that is indexed and searchable,” he said, explaining the intent is to help visitors locate names and placements more easily.

Council members asked whether the Veterans Commission maintains its own web page; Cosby said the commission has not authorized updates to that single page and that the city-maintained page contains basic information. Council members expressed appreciation for the ceremony and discussed coordinating updates to city web pages for public access to memorial information.

Ending

Cosby concluded the report by inviting councilors and residents to discuss the memorial-brick indexing plan with him. The Veterans Commission’s outreach and documentation work will continue in coordination with city staff.