During Orange Township’s five-hour (7 p.m. to midnight) meeting Monday, trustees were advised by Beth Hugh, Maintenance and Parks director, that the township had been awarded a $491,040 grant from the Ohio Public Works Commission.
“This is for improvements to the intersection for a roundabout at Highfield and Green Meadows,” Hugh said.
Trustee Debbie Taranto offered her congratulations and asked who had worked on the grant.
“We work with the county on it,” Hugh said.
Trustee Ryan Rivers told Hugh, “congrats.”
Hugh said she couldn’t give a total estimated cost until the final drawings had been completed.
However, “based upon the engineer’s estimate, the common grant was the $491,000,” she said. “That does not include utility relocation.”
Hugh said once the drawings were completed she could move forward with acquiring right-of-ways. She said the project would start in 2018 but construction wouldn’t happen until 2019.
“Construction will probably begin in ‘19,” she said. “We do right-of-way acquisitions and utility relocation for construction to begin as early in ‘19 as possible.”
Trustees then moved to the parks report.
Hugh said the three movies for residents to vote on for the June 23 movie event were Coco, Peter Rabbit and the Emoji Movie. She said residents could vote for their favorite movie on Survey Monkey April 9-16.
The next item on Hugh’s list was a discussion for the Alum Creek Bridge Trail ribbon cutting. She said that the park board had initially suggested an early date in May but there was still some construction in progress.
“The recommendation is to do that May 18,” she said. “That is a tentative date. I want input from the trustees and then we’ll finalize the date a little bit later. We need to get the deck poured, the deck is scheduled to be poured next week. It is very weather dependent and if the deck doesn’t get poured it could push the date back even more.”
Hugh said once a date is confirmed, the cutting would be held at noon so the Army Corp of Engineers and Alum Creek employees who helped with the project could participate in the ceremony.
Next on the agenda was a discussion for a naming contest for the new park on North Rd.
“The recommendation is to do a similar naming contest for what we did for Bridge Park,” Hugh said. “The parks board recommendation is to do it in June when the pool opens so we can have a box at the pool and a box at the library so people can submit their name recommendations. We would also do it by email.”
Orange Township celebrated its bicentennial October 2016 by unveiling the name for Orange Bridge Park, a 1.5-acre parcel next to the bridge crossing over U.S. 23 from the Orange Branch Library to the Mount Carmel Fitness Center.
Rivers asked what the response was like for Bridge Park since he wasn’t a trustee during that time.
“We had a pretty good response last time,” said Amanda Shetorem, Human Resources and Communication manager.
“Which had the most activity?” Rivers asked. “The email or the library (box)?”
Both Hugh and Shetorem said responses were even between both of the mediums.
“I think it was very well-received,” Hugh said. “There were a lot of submissions from families where you could tell that the kids submitted names and moms and dads had some name suggestions.”
Knapp suggested that overall the park’s names came from the locations of the parks.
“As park director, I would request we not call this one North Road Park because it’s very confusing with North Orange Park and North Farms,” Hugh said.
Knapp insisted that it is where the park will be located.
“We have North Orange Park, Bridge Park, Township Hall Park, Ro Park and Glen Oak Park. I would hesitate to think of anything other than North Road Park because they are all directional in nature,” Knapp said. “That would be the most logical.”
In 2016, the name of Orange Bridge Park had been suggested but trustees decided to hold a contest to let residents choose the name. The name still came back as Orange Bridge Park from residents.
“We went out to the community because we wanted to see what they felt this should be called,” said Trustee Rob Quigley at the naming and official opening of the Orange Bridge Park in 2016. “They felt this is the most appropriate name and I’m in full support of it.”
Hugh said she thought it was a great way to introduce the park to the residents.
“It’s really good advertising for us,” she said. “All the other parks were named internally by what we had been calling them during construction and design. I think it’s a good way to get the public involved and if it ends up being North Road Park, it ends up being North Road Park.”
“I know that it builds excitement for the park, but I wouldn’t name it anything other than North Road Park,” Knapp told Hugh. “I can’t think of any other names that possibly it could be other than … I don’t know.”
Knapp said she would hate to hold a naming contest where people would “pick out the same name anyway.”
The issue was moved to the trustees’ agenda for April 16 at 7 p.m. at the township hall, 1680 Orange Road.