Parks Funding A Hot Topic As Council Passes Budget

Evansville IN

12 October, 2021

2:36 PM

Description

By Steve Burger, WNIN Oct. 12, 2021 During a three hour marathon session Monday evening, the Evansville City Council passed a budget for 2022. One of the most contentious items in the budget turned out to be Evansville parks. Thanks to federal stimulus funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, next year a million dollars will go to start work on Roberts Park, which was turned down several times previously by the council. Speaking over the council's web feed, Second Ward Councilor Missy Mosby, long a champion of city parks, proposed an amendment to instead use the million dollars in Rescue Plan funding to pay for maintenance on the sixty plus parks currently in the system. "Come on council members and the administration, we've got to do something. $300,000 isn't the answer. We need more." The proposal was defeated six to three. Several of the council members who voted against Mosby's amendment said they would work toward getting more of the federal stimulus dollars allocated for parks maintenance and improvements. WNIN is the NPR/PBS affiliate in Evansville, Indiana. We serve Southwestern Indiana, Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois from our multimedia facility located on the Ohio River in downtown Evansville. For the past several years, the recognized quality of our local news has placed us among the best small market radio news organizations in the nation.