Moberly Park Upgrades Are Approved By Board

Moberly Park is getting some upgrades.
Wednesday night the Trenton Park Board unanimously accepted two measures designed to improve the grounds at Moberly Park. The board gave the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter permission to use the existing war memorial in the park as a place to set a new brick memorial wall. The board also voted to move forward with repairs to the upper Moberly parking lot.
Tony Ralston, the commander of the local VFW attended the meeting, asking the board’s permission to set a new memorial on the base of the current memorial, which measures 46 feet from step to step. The VFW is seeking to place an outdoor memorial similar to the semi-circle brick memorials at the Wright Memorial Hospital grounds. The goal is to have a local war memorial that can be viewed at all hours. Ralston said the memorial with names in the courthouse can only be seen during hours of courthouse operation and that he has been approached by individuals who have been unable to show visitors the memorial due to the courthouse being closed at the time of their families’ visits, usually on the weekends.
The VFW plans to sell bricks to people who can have names of family members who were war veterans engraved onto them. Those bricks, which will be sold for $100 each, will be used to build the memorial with the names visible.
Ralston had two different plans for the memorial, which would be incorporated into the existing memorial without necessitating the removal or changing what is already there.
The board overwhelmingly favored the idea of placing the new brick structure at the memorial in Moberly Park, but questioned what cost it would be to the Parks Department. Ralston assured the board that all the bricks to be used would be paid for by the people purchasing the bricks. Other items for the project such as concrete and labor might be able to be partially paid for by the VFW as well. Board president Curtis Crawford said he didn’t think it would be difficult to find people willing to donate money toward the project for installation.
While the board voted to allow the VFW to use the existing memorial in the park as a place for the new brick monument, they did not commit to anything financially.
Ralston said he would contact the hospital to find out who did the monuments there to garner an idea of what the cost for construction would be and report back to the board at a later date once he had an idea of what the cost and timeframe would be for the project.
Cracks in the parking lot on the upper side of Moberly Park have been discussed for months now, but the board finally voted to approve going forward with the project. Park Superintendent David Shockley had spoken with the street department about the cost of repairing the lot and received an estimate of $4,180. That estimate included $2,100 for asphalt patching of the cracks, $1,540 for completely replacing the north entrance to the parking lot and $540 for MC800 oil to seal the entire lot.
Marvin Humphreys, who attended the meeting as a city liaison said if the board went ahead with the project he would talk to the city stating that he believed there was some wiggle room in the asphalt patching portion of the quote. While not promising anything, he believed he though the city could knock down that cost a little.
A dog park was briefly discussed, but Shockley and Crawford said neither one has been approached with an official request or plan. The board had simply heard of the idea and had brief conversations about it. It was mentioned that there currently is not very much unused land in the parks system and a dog park would require ample space and water accessibility.
The board also plans to look into the parking spaces directly in front of the swimming pool. There is some confusion as to whether those were parking spaces or a zone for unloading and loading children. Humphreys stated that he saw a child nearly get hit because the spaces were full and a parent had to drop her kid off in the street.
The board discussed putting up signs marking the area as an unloading and loading zone only, but also brought up the fact that there are handicapped spaces there and they are required to keep a certain amount of handicap parking spots available. Crawford and Shockley said they would talk to Trenton Police Chief Rex Ross about handicap requirements and the possibility of making a portion of the area an loading and unloading zone.
In old business, Shockley said he had looked into other bids for placing permanent cement cornhole boards in Eastside Park. Shockley looked at costs from three other companies, but all were higher than the original estimate from Doty & Sons Concrete Products, LLC out of Sycamore, IL — which was $2,000 for two sets. With winter coming, no decision was made and the board would be eyeing a spring installation for that project. It was agreed to discuss the issue again at the next meeting.
Gary Schuett gave a brief grounds committee report, saying Shockley’s crews had done a good job keeping new trees watered over the summer and that he planned to begin doing some trimming on the smaller trees in the parks. In the facilities committee report, Crawford said bathrooms at Ray Van Meter, Gladys Grimes and Upper Moberly parks had been locked after Tik Tok videos showing kids destroying bathrooms started popping up. Those bathrooms were deemed to be less used than other bathrooms in the parks. Crawford also noted they had not had issues as of yet stemming from the videos in the bathrooms that were in higher trafficked areas and those have remained open.
The meeting closed with the superintendent’s report. Other than routine items, Shockley said gravel has been replaced around three of the disc golf pads in Moberly Park with work to continue on the six remaining pads. A drainage ditch between C.F. Russell Stadium and Burleigh Grimes Field had begun to fill with dirt, so crews worked to clean out that ditch to encourage better drainage and water flow between the two facilities. Shockley has also gone through the parks inventory so he can start stocking up on supplies now rather than waiting until spring, citing major shortages nationwide in a lot of goods, including those used frequently by the parks department.
The next regularly scheduled meeting of the Trenton Park Board is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 3.