The City of Lisbon is looking into forming a committee focused on the city parks.
Citizen Robert Zahorik asked for the committee to help plan the nature park on the McElmeel property.
“I feel like this board could be responsible for organizing grants, searching for volunteers to assist with parks, help with pond maintenance and other care in the park,” Zahorik said.
The city is in preliminary planning stages for the Nature Park, and Zahorik saw this as one way to help the development.
Council member John Bardsley said even though the community has a parks and recreation board already, the parks sometimes get lost with the focus of that board being recreation activities for youth and adults.
Zahorik said there were already roughly three people interested in serving on a committee focused on the parks.
Council member Mike Williams said the parks and recreation board should oversee parks issues, that the board has not done a lot with parks before now as there haven’t been a lot of issues that need to be addressed.
Parks and recreation director Drayton Kamberling did agree that his focus has been on the recreation side, and, aside from him helping with maintenance of the parks, there aren’t a lot of discussion items on parks in the board meetings.
The parks and recreation board is currently at capacity, with the council holding a hearing at the July 11 meeting to expand the board for more members.
Council member Nathan Smith recommended creating a subcommittee of the parks and recreation board or trees board that would focus on parks in Lisbon, as opposed to putting these members on the current tree or parks and recreation boards.
“I’d hate to see us get into the issue we’ve had in not being able to find enough volunteers for a board at a later date,” Smith said. “We’ve struggled in the past to get people to boards for a number of years, and I’m hesitant to add more numbers to any board unless we can add value to that board to do so.”
City administrator Brandon Siggins said he will be visiting with Zahorik, Kamberling and members of the tree board to come up with a solution for a more nature focused board. The issue will come up for approval at a later council meeting.