Jasper Park Board meeting notes

The Jasper Parks Board meeting was held Tuesday afternoon with four out of five members were present. Board President Roger Seger was absent.

The board attorney, Renee Kabrick, opened several quotes on budgeted items, the first being 25 golf carts. Louisville based Cunningham Gof Cart was awarded the contract on Yamaha gas powered units, at a net cost with trade-in of $34,700.00.

Next was for a new mower for Ruxer Golf Course. The low bidder was Hopf Outdoor Power in Jasper on a Kubota, at a cost of $25,155.00. The board passed the recommendation on the purchase.

Park Boards Director, Ken Buck, announced his selection of 8 seasonal employees. They include: Tyler Begle, Craig Popp, Chris Hahn, Jerome Jahn, Harold Lents, William Mattingly, Denny Vaal, Cynthia Zehr.  The board approved the hiring of the employees. He reports that more will be added as more spring weather arrives and other park venues such as the pool open for the year.

Kabrick advised the board of other activities, including:

A resolution on the serving of alcohol at the city golf courses, which the city council passed as an ordinance establishing a non-reverting capital fund to capture money for the building of a new club house. The resolution would authorize 20 percent of alcohol proceeds at Ruxer and Buffalo Trace golf courses to go into the fund. It passed unanimously.

Finally, Kabrick gave an update on the Parklands property. She reports that they received a proposal from Hafer Associates of Evansville and Owensboro for the engineering, design and the oversight of the Parklands project.

Proposal is a contract to complete the remaining parts of the project including, project initiation, geo technical study, schematic design, design development, construction documents, permitting and approvals, review of bid documents, public information meetings as required, and project oversight.

Hafer submitted a proposal for $424,500.00. Kabrick is negotiating the scope of the project.

“It was pretty consistent with what we expected,” she said. The costs of doing the work is estimated at just over 8 percent of the entire project costs, which is around $5 million.

Since the terms of the agreement are still in the negotiation stage, no recommendation was brought before the board to vote on during last night’s meeting. The update from Kabrick was merely informational only.

And, even though the Parks Board and Director Ken Buck reiterated that time is of the essence, he acknowledged also that they will have to be patient to wait until the final proposal is agreed upon.