By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph voters next Tuesday will decide a half-cent sales tax designed to upgrade the city parks system.
City officials estimate the tax would generate between $50 and $60 million over its 10-year lifespan. The tax has a 10-year sunset clause.
Chair Chris Clark with the St. Joseph Committee to Restore Our Parks says the committee is composed of members who discussed what can be done to improve the current parks system.
“Everyone has seen the shape that they’ve turn into over time. They’ve slowly gotten worse and worse,” Clark tells St. Joseph Parks. “The Parks (Dept.) budget continues to kind of decrease as well. They’re being asked to do more with less. They’re having a hard time staffing people. They’re having equipment that’s breaking down. So, they’re not able to maintain to the level that we would like and level that we would expect.”
Clark also serves on an advisory board to the St. Joseph Parks, Recreation, and Civic Facilities Department. That advisory board helped the department settle on a list of improvements that would be funded through the tax increase, which he says grew out of a discussion on what could be done to improve the current park system. Members of that advisory board then decided to form a committee to promote the half-cent sales tax, according to Clark.
Clark says St. Joseph residents are understandably proud of their park system, but he adds that system has been allowed to deteriorate over the years.
“I think people are proud of what we’ve got. We have a very robust park system,” Clark says. “But I think if anybody spends any time in any of these facilities, they’re going to walk in and they’re going to walk through and realize that there are some issues that need to be addressed.”
The City of St. Joseph has a list of proposed projects on its website. [Click here for the list.] It is highlighted by nearly $12.8 million in improvements to Krug Park. The extra funds would pay for $8.8 million in improvements to the Noyes Complex, $3 million to the Bode Sports Complex, $2.8 million for Hyde Park, $2.5 million for the Northside Complex, $2.1 million for the Civic Arena, among many other projects.
Approximately $4.5 million would be set aside for parks maintenance.
Clark urges residents to step up and support a proposal designed to upgrade one of the city’s greatest assets.
“Too many times people say I wish they would do this, I wish someone would do this, they need to fix that,” Clark says. “I think everyone needs to realize that ‘they’ and ‘someone’ is us.”