by LAURA KEIL, Publisher
Last week the Village installed a “spray arch” at Centennial Park.
The Public Works Committee brought forward this idea in 2016, and now it’s here.
The wooden doorway sprays misted water to help cool off anyone feeling a little hot on a summer’s day.
This wasn’t ordered on Alibaba from China, it can’t be punctured, and it has a certain “homemade” look to it – because Public Works built it.
This is an example of the local gumption that I love.
Public Works built and assembled it using a variety of locally sourced and online parts, according to Village CAO Adam Davey.
If you look at the Community Charter, you won’t see legislation that says:
“Local Governments shall build and maintain spray parks.”
You also won’t see “figure out how to build a spray arch” in the job description of Public Works employees.
But Council and staff bought into the vision and made it happen. Kudos!
Some people are being Negative Nellies and putting down this improvement, unhelpfully sharing links to urban spray parks that would no doubt cost hundreds of thousands.
It’s good to hold a vision in your mind of the final goal – but it’s also important to celebrate the steps along the way.
The spray arch is cool in and of itself and it’s also an important step in a larger vision. It will help gauge interest for a larger spray park, before we pour a crazy amount of tax money into it.
I hope, too, that it will empower others – perhaps a business or organization – to contribute a feature of a future spray park.
The spray arch, to me, stands for local initiative and determination. Together, let’s see where that door leads.
