Meeting at Town Hall and Updates

Notes from meeting at Town Hall, September 3, 2008 with Tony Nielsen, Jack Jones, and Kelly McDonald.

To review our meeting on 9/3:

The PALS board will be working in October to get a budget approved by Town Council to pay the architect firm that will be designing the playground on the Wilson, Carmel, Ruff tracts.  Therefore, no actual blueprints will be designed until the town approves money for this piece of the project but it is expected to happen without a problem.  The architect firm’s name is Dunaway and Associates and the particular architect who will work on this project is Larry O’Flynn.  We would like to get some fundraising going to get the community involved in the project by donating money or committing to buy specific playground pieces.  We decided that we would probably get a better response from donors if we had some specifics about the playground to show them so I don’t know that we can do much fundraising until the design process has gotten a little more underway.

Tony said that a wooden playground could easily cost as much at $300,000 to build (although he had told me in a previous conversation that it could cost as much as $500,000 if we wanted something really exceptional).  I did not clarify if that is materials only or if that included labor costs to install it as well.  The town has not discussed a budget for the playground but any efforts we can make to raise money will only help the playground be bigger and better.  It was pointed out that if we demonstrate community excitement for the project by showing Town Council large donations from the community then that may help increase the budget that they approve.

There is a possibility that the playground budget approval may get pushed back for a while so that the town can put money towards expanding the pool areas at the new Community Activity Center first.

We asked about a way to allow donors to get a tax deduction for their donations.  I was told to contact John Thomas on the PALS board because he has been interested in having a “Park Foundation” for some time now and that he could probably give me some information about it.

Updates:

I have contacted John Thomas to ask about a park foundation.  There is not currently a park foundation in place and he said that the person he had in mind to help us with this will not be available to help.  He didn’t give me any more information or leads to work on.  I know nothing at all about foundations so I just spent some time this afternoon doing some quick searches online.  Wow, do I feel overwhelmed.  I read about all kinds of IRS stuff and tax forms, having a set of board members, etc.  I’m not sure where to go with this right now.  I’ve sent an email to John Thomas and Tony Nielsen with the PALS board to just see if there isn’t already some kind of foundation set up within the town that we could use.

I’ve sent emails to the parks departments of Highland Village and Coppell to try to get contact information for the organizers of their wooden playgrounds.  Rhoda with Highland Village responded but didn’t give me any specific info.  Instead she referred me to the city of Allen to find out what they did for a playground that they built.  I’d like to talk to someone who has already done this to see if they used a foundation for their donations and to see if they have any suggestions for us.

Linda Newkirk has worked hard with her girl scout troop to put on the first fundraising project for the playground.  They had a garage sale this weekend and raised $170 for the playground.  The girls will continue to work to raise money throughout their calendar year and hope to reach their goal of $1000 by next summer.  Awesome work, Linda!