Good News Friday: Overdue Investment
Today, I am sharing #GoodNewsFriday in the form of an exciting announcement. For too many years, Stamford’s Washington Park has needed renovation. Among other things, the playground equipment is outdated and unsafe. Facilities are limited and in poor condition. It is long past time to rectify this lack of investment in one of Stamford’s cornerstone pieces of infrastructure, our city parks.
Over recent months, a group of community leaders has worked to develop a long-term vision for Washington Park. In this process, we have discovered that, though the property is City-owned and has long been used as a park, it was never formally dedicated for park purposes. Simply put, without a formal dedication, the City could decide at any time to re-use the property for some other purpose. We intend to fix that immediately. Generous landowners have donated adjacent parcels to the park and the City of Stamford will soon formally dedicate an expanded Washington Park for use as a park in perpetuity.
This rough outline of improvements will give way to more detailed renderings in the future, but it sets forth our vision for the future of a multiuse park with playground equipment, sports facilities, pavilions with storage, restrooms, a cooking areas, and more. This not merely a one-year project or a five-year project. This is a comprehensive project that will start with short-term priority investments and continue until the long-term vision is complete. We have already started this process by removing the dangerous slide and see-saw and selecting new pieces of replacement play equipment.
Like any important project, the renewal of Washington Park will not be cheap. We will take it in three parts. First, the City of Stamford will soon begin discussing its budget for the next fiscal year (beginning October 1, 2021). In that budget, our committee will request that the City make an immediate investment into the park for short-term priorities as the first of a multiyear series of City investments. Next, we will solicit community investment into a fund that will help finance upgrades. No donation will be too large or too small. I am calling on families, businesses, churches, and all other groups in town to help as they are able. Finally, our local investment can be used as matching funds with which to pursue grant funding opportunities.
Folks, this investment is long overdue, but I am enthused to see it happen. If we intend to attract and retain young families to our community, we must have vibrant neighborhood parks that can be accessed by children on foot, without having to cross a major highway. Washington Park is just that park for a large swath of our community. We have a golden opportunity to invest in a park with such great potential and in doing so, we can rejuvenate many blocks of our town. It starts right here and it starts right now.
“Good News Friday” is a weekly feature spotlighting positive news and activities in the #StamfordTexas community as a part of our quest to build a #BetterStamford.