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Abundant sunshine. High 98F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph..
Mostly clear. Low 74F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
Tom Riley, vice president of the El Paso Park and Playground Association, asked for $40,000 from the White County Quorum Court for ballfield bleachers and playground upgrades.
Shannon Webb, chairman of the board for the Floyd Community Center, requested $30,000 from the White County Quorum Court to put a new porch on the center.
Tom Riley, vice president of the El Paso Park and Playground Association, asked for $40,000 from the White County Quorum Court for ballfield bleachers and playground upgrades.
Shannon Webb, chairman of the board for the Floyd Community Center, requested $30,000 from the White County Quorum Court to put a new porch on the center.
The White County Quorum Court is helping El Paso and Floyd make community improvements since both are unincorporated and unable to get grants.
Shannon Webb, chairman of the board for the Floyd Community Center, requested $30,000 to be added to $10,000 that the community has saved for a new porch for its community center.
“We’ve had it operational for about five years now,” he said of the community center. “We’ve been having school reunions, weddings, and in Floyd, in our community, we’re known for having community meals and suppers every so often in months.
“... Things have been working well, but the building still is what it is.”
He said the community center itself was the mess hall for Camp Robinson and for the school district a long time ago. Webb said the building itself is strong “but the exterior is still fading and decaying.”
He said the community has had to deconstruct some of the building to remove hazards like wasps and bees but still has a tarp covering where the old door was for bringing in food for the Floyd school. “The entire area has been rebuilt, so the inside is nice but the exterior is still decaying.”
Webb said for “people that are a little unsteady,” the entrance into the community center is not very safe.
“We don’t have a porch, we just have the original steps that were there when it was the school cafeteria,” he said. “What this means is when you enter the community center, you have a handrail to one side and you enter the door but the door opens inside so you’re holding on to the doorknob; you take one more step into the building and every now and then somebody would stumble in the building.
“We did have one person trip and fall; thankfully they weren’t injured but it’s really not a good situation because we don’t have a porch.”
Webb also said the building is high on a hill so when the community gets rain from the west, water comes into the building since there is no porch.
Floyd created a building fund some years to correct the porch situation and the siding. However, when the community started making progress, Webb said “COVID hit and the prices went through the roof.”
He said the community has had fundraisers for the operating costs of the community center but it has been low revenue coming in.
The $40,000 cost is for a porch and siding, Webb said. The new siding will be metal while the current siding is vinyl and has kind of “dry-rotted.” Webb said the “red wasps and bees” came in on one side.
Underneath the vinyl siding is the original wood from the Camp Robinson barracks. “We don’t believe vinyl will last for another 60 or 70 years,“ Webb said. He said the community center itself is non-profit.
Tom Riley, vice president of the El Paso Park and Playground Association, said his community also has been “kind of bitten by COVID in terms of a community resource availability.”
“We find ourselves with two ballfields and 30-year-old bleachers for those ballfields that used to have wooden seats and then we have a number of other things that are going on associated with the community park and playground area, including the community center,” Riley said.
He said the association went through a recommended bid process “and we got a bid of $80,000 to replace our bleachers. We kind of decided that was really beyond anything that we could even start to raise the money to get and so we started looking at the other options that were available.”
The current plan is to “order bleachers and have them delivered to Searcy, pick them up and install them ourselves, put them together, put everything together for serving about 300 people at the two ballfields that we have and essentially getting those ballfields back to operational use.”
Riley said parents have to bring lawn chairs to watch the games because using the bleachers would be unsafe. He said what the association trying to do is “put a safe aluminum galvanized supportive bleacher in place for each of our ballfields.”
He said El Paso also has “no usable park facilities for kids except the slide that’s been there since about 1938, and it’s still usable. It’s still a quality piece of recreational equipment in our facility but we don’t have things that support the recreational use of the park, including our basketball goals and things like that that all need to be upgraded and a soccer field and things like that that we want to do.”
Riley’s $40,000 request included the bleachers, upgrades for the playground area and repair work because, he said, a power company failed to replace a pole soon enough and it tore down a bunch of fence that will have to be replaced.
Riley said there are people in the community “who are ready and willing” to put everything together. “We wouldn’t want it any other way. We got a strong volunteer community and we want our community to own it when it comes down to actually continuing to support it and make the community the best place to be made.”
White County Judge Michael Lincoln reminded justices of the peace at last week’s Budget and Finance Committee that despite not being an incorporated city, that “they generate a lot of tax revenue that comes to the county in that little area.”
He said Riley and his wife, Judy, have been instrumental in raising money for the public library and for the community.
Justice Bobby Burns made the motion to send the request from El Paso to the Quorum Court, where it and the Floyd community’s request were approved Tuesday. Burns said all of his kids played ball in El Paso.
What: Approves funds for community improvements for Floyd and El Paso
Amounts: Floyd getting $30,000 to add to the $10,000 community has saved for porch and siding for community center; El Paso getting $40,000 for new bleachers, repairs and playground equipment
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