Wasilla council votes Monday on $200,000 contract for a new parks plan

The Wasilla City Council will vote Monday on a $200,000 contract with Corvus Design to write a new parks master plan, replacing one the city adopted in 2011.

The plan would set a 20-year framework for the city's parks, which cover more than 240 acres inside city limits along with about 10 miles of bike trails, according to the city. It would recommend park projects with conceptual layouts, rough cost estimates and strategies for grants and partnerships, the council packet says. Public Works Director Erich Schaal wrote in a September memo that the work should take about a year, with several chances for the public to weigh in.

"At some point the city's going to have to have a real conversation about the cost of parks. And can we keep funding them with a sales tax?" Crystal Nygaard, then acting city planner, told the Planning Commission on Sept. 22. Wasilla's sales tax is 2.5%. The council's goals for this budget year, adopted in March, include finishing the parks plan and a sales tax analysis.

Nygaard said no city department she knew of has really tracked how many people use the parks. The traffic analysis tool the city already uses could "geofence a park and see where the users are coming from," she said.

At the same meeting, she said that when the city asked 10th and 11th graders, as part of separate work on its comprehensive plan, for one thing that makes them think of Wasilla, Wonderland Park came first and Taco Bell second.

One project that could be considered in the plan is the Mat-Su Softball Association's proposed ball field expansion at the Bumpus Recreation Area, which the city's Parks and Recreation Commission endorsed in September with no money attached, Alaska News reported.

The contract includes $40,000 to map park assets in the city's GIS system and $160,000 for the plan itself. It's expected to run three years with an option for two more, and lets the city add design and engineering work later as money becomes available. Approving it doesn't commit the city to paying for future design or construction, the packet says.

The city said in August that it would seek proposals for both the parks plan and a new road plan, Alaska News reported Sept. 2. The Planning Commission takes up a resolution supporting the parks update Tuesday. It says the city "has grown and changed considerably" since 2011.