By Desiree Williams
The Zionsville Park Board is gearing up to begin the months-long process of creating a 5-year, system-wide plan for Zionsville parks and recreation. Master plans work on a broad scale to ready the park system for development based on community feedback.
“This is more global,” said Matt Dickey, parks director. “We’re looking at the whole park system and the next five, maybe even out 10 years.”
To start the process, the board reviews the previous 5-year plan and rates the success of each action item based on a 5-point scale. Dickey said that 70 percent of the board’s actions ranked in the fair or very good category for the last plan.
The next step is to hear from the public. The plan is based on what the community would like to see happen, so Dickey said the board goes into this process without concrete goals of its own.
The board will release an online survey for the community including multiple choice questions and areas to write in a response. Dickey said the last survey received nearly 500 responses. The new survey is in development.
Once the survey responses have been recorded, the board will host several stakeholder meetings including elected officials, members of homeowner associations, staff and other representatives.
“By doing the public survey ahead of time, that lets us say ‘you know, we are kind of hearing this from the public. What are your thoughts about this?”” Dickey said.
There will also be at least two open meetings for the public. The first will be this month or next for citizens to discuss their vision, and the second will be early next year to discuss the plan’s progress.
The department will send the state a draft of the plan in January for comments followed by the final version April 15.
The Parks Dept. newsletter will contain updates and a link to the online survey when it’s available. To sign up, visit zionsville-in.gov.
