North Egypt News

The Mount Vernon city council recently voted on a motion to complete some work on Optimist Park.

The city council had a first read of a motion to remove old and dilapidated play structures from Optimist Park in the city. There are several bad spots in the park, with some holes in the structure and cones currently blocking access to parts deemed unsafe. There is also a concrete skate park site located at the park. 

The council opted to suspend the rules so that they could pass the final motion at the Dec. 5 council meeting instead of accepting the first read and having to take the final vote at a later board meeting. They discussed where they planned to move the skate park as well, perhaps to a different location in the city.

"So the skate park plan was to move it down closer towards Lincoln Park in the future or possibly Veterans. We did have plans to add some features down at Lincoln Park, such as the skate park, batting cages and a few others, but funding for those hasn't been identified yet," assistant city manager Nathan McKenna said.  

The council plans to remove all defunct equipment and then in the future make room in the budget to put up new structures. The council also plans to move the structure along with the basketball court to the other side of the park so that it would be out of the flood zone, and leave the former site as some greenspace.