Parks and the Planning Commission

Last night, Tuesday, August 24th, the Highland City Planning Commission was given charge to review the city park construction priorities. This was identified because this is a good time for construction and land acquisition. However, the city has very limited funds at this time, so park prioritization is in order. There were several parks identified, Chamberry Park (Athena Park water retention basin) being one on the prioritization list for review. For a full listing of the parks to be reviewed, you can download the Planning Commission agenda for August 25th, and they are identified from page 61 to 65. Page 62 gives a list of parks and their corresponding numbers are listed on the maps to follow.

While this was not open for public hearing, Argo Circle Park and Chamberry Park were well known by the Planning Commission. This was because of your great emails to the Planning Commission members, as well as the pictures, petition, power point presentations, and personal grounds tours by some of the Planning Commission members. Because of the extent of review that is required for prioritizing parks, the Planning Commission has requested more time to review the information, acquire cost projections, review neighborhood demographics (i.e. number of kids in the neighborhood), and tour all sites for future parks. This will be addressed again at future Planning Commission meetings and will be a long process towards park completion.

With Argo Circle Park being considered a Mini Park, the city considers this as completed. We are currently in the process of trying to work with the city to bring trails to the playground and possibly install benches. This may be a difficult process, but we will keep working on it.

Chamberry Park (Athena water retention area) is listed on the Highland City's Existing and Future Parks map as a neighborhood park. We are working with the Planning Commission on bringing this open flooded area (water retention basin) to meet Highland City's Development Code specified guidelines for a neighborhood park.

Keep working on sending those great emails. The Highland City Council and Highland City Planning Commission's email addresses can be found on the city's website at http://highlandcity.org/. You can then follow the link on the left for city government elected and appointed officials.