Ducks swim at Fort Borst Park Wednesday morning.
The City of Centralia is conducting a survey to gather input from the public on the 2019/2020 Parks and Recreation plan.
Questions ask how safe residents feel in Centralia parks and how they feel public parks should be funded. The city is updating their Parks and Recreation Plan and the goals of the survey is to field information from the public that will help the city establish goals and priorities when it comes to park projects.
Emil Pierson, the Community Development director for the City of Centralia, said “the updated plan will establish a road map for providing high quality, community-driven parks, trails, open space and recreation facilities throughout Centralia.”
Pierson said that the updated Parks and Recreation plan will guide the City of Centralia and their decisions for the next 20 years. The last parks and recreation survey was conducted in 2014 and new questions and topics have been added including: the outdoor pool, seeing for picnic shelters, and rentable kitchen spaces. The very last question on the survey is also new which asks, “who do you see as the underserved and overserved populations?”
“We don’t know the desires of the silent majority so we would love to hear from them,” said Pierson to encourage the citizens of Centralia to take the survey.
“We would love people of all ages to fill out the survey. Parents help your kids fill it out. School-age kids please fill it out. We would like every segment of the population to comment on it so we can very well-rounded feedback from the citizens of Centralia,” said Pierson. The survey asks about trail systems, picnic shelters, playgrounds, restrooms, and ballfields. Pierson said that playgrounds seem to be the number one thing that people focus on and that the city council acknowledges that.
The current Parks and Recreation plan can be found on the City of Centralia’s website and the updated one will be very similar and use the same format. The survey will help the city to know what the public would like to focus on or change.
The survey can be found on the city of Centralia’s website or Facebook page or at this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/P2LDK87. The city encourages all citizens to take and to pass it along to others who may be interested in taking it. The more information the City of Centralia can gather the better they are able to reflect the concerns and desires of the citizens in the Parks & Recreation plan update. The survey will be open to the public until Monday, Dec 2.
