Published: May 15, 2008 04:32 pm            

Parks Project looking for volunteers to bring build date closer

The Commerce Parks Project is still going strong and organizers have already raised $50,000 towards a new playground for City Park.

Although work was originally scheduled to start in April on the project, organizer Jeanie Putman said that date has been pushed back. The major reason for that is lack of volunteers to do the background work for the project.

“I thought all along that the hard part would be the money,” Putman said. “But the hard part has turned out to be the volunteers to do the behind-the-scenes work. That’s what we’re really needing right now are volunteers to help get this thing off the ground.

“We had originally said back at Design Day, which was back in September, that we were going to build in April. Well, we are not ready to build. That’s one big thing we need to let people know is that our build date is being postponed. It’s primarily because we need volunteers who have time to do the research on pricing for the materials so we can develop our budget and that type of thing.”

The group is actively trying to form into a nonprofit corporation, according to Putman. She said that will allow the Parks Project group to apply for more grants than if it were a city committee.

“We’re doing small fund raisers (right now), but we’re going to kind of back off of some of those just because people don’t have time and they’re very time consuming,” she said. “I mean, we raised over $1,000 at the Chili cook-off just selling barbecue sandwiches and things.

“We’re really going to start looking at some of the bigger money opportunities. We’re going to start seeking more of the corporate sponsorships from some of the corporations in the area that aren’t necessarily in Commerce.”

But still, getting the volunteers to do the leg work is key to their plans, according to Putman. If the volunteers come forward, the committee hopes to move forward with a build date in the fall. If not, it could be next year.

The volunteers are needed to contact different suppliers so the lowest price can be obtained and the committee can set its budget. There’s also a list of materials that can be donated and the committee needs someone to contact suppliers to see if they would be willing to donate those items.

“A lot of it is phone calls and e-mails,” Putman said. “It’s just real time consuming and most of us work full time, we have small children, and we just don’t have the time to do some of those things.”

The Parks Project also needs someone to volunteer to maintain its Web site and someone to be a public relations person.

The idea for the Parks Project originally came from Kim Lewis’ fourth and fifth grade PACE class at A.C. Williams Elementary in 2004. Lewis continues to work on the project.

“It’s happening,” said Putman. “It may be a year from now or two years from now. But Kim Lewis and I, we both feel in our hearts that it’s happening and we just have to be patient.”

        

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