The Eureka Springs Parks and Recreation Commission feels there needs to be a better system when it comes to putting up and taking down Christmas decorations in the city.

At the commission’s regular monthly meeting held Tuesday, Jan. 23, parks director Sam Dudley said his staff handled some things involving decorations that he felt were out of purview of his department.

“Not trying to throw too much gas on the fire or anything … the reason I’m bringing this up is that Eureka Springs is trying to become a Christmas destination, which I think it great,” Dudley told commissioners. “With the CAPC and the city, we’re all throwing in pretty big amounts of money for decorations every year.

“My first experience as director with Christmas was that there’s not a really great system for how we’re doing it, how things are getting organized. Delegations of tasks is just sort of like, let’s get this, let’s get this, let’s get this and then we’ll figure it out as we go. As the department that has to do a lot of the decorating storage, the tear down (of) decorations, I’m really needing some backup from y’all because what I think needs to happen is that parks says, hey, we are decorating our parks but we aren’t going to be responsible for decorating other pieces of property. They’re not ours. We can’t be responsible for every square inch of town, not to say that we do everything because public works does stuff, too.

“There were things purchased this last year that got put in areas that aren’t on parks property and purchased from a company that does great work and they came out and installed it. But, then it was sort of just put on us to do the un-installation and then store them.”

Dudley said he wants to meet with the City Advertising and Promotion Commission and other city officials and develop a system so things are better understood next holiday season.

“There just needs to be a system and a protocol,” he said. “Who is in charge of what? I’m not sure how to say it the right way, but I think we’re going to perhaps draw a line in the sand and say this is where we are with Christmas.”

Commissioners agreed, saying that a document needs to be drawn up outlining what parks will do for the holidays moving forward.

“It’d be helpful if we all knew what our roles were,” commissioner Ruth Hager said. “It’s been like this for years, who does what and who stores what and all of that. It would be nice to have these laid out exactly what they’re supposed to be … a proposal in writing.”

Mark Ingram, who was voted in as the new parks commission chair during the meeting, said once a plan is developed it should be presented to the CAPC and city to make sure everyone is on the same page.

“It needs to be coming from the commission, what parks is committed to doing for Christmas,” Ingram said. “You’re going to have to write down all of those things we are going to do and then that’s going to be it. And then next year, when somebody says y’all need to go do … we’re like, no, no, look at this.”

Dudley agreed. “I’m not trying to be the Grinch, but we’re a small team,” he said. “… We love decorating the springs, the parks that are ours and we make them look nice.”

Commissioner Rodd Gray, who was voted in as the new vice chair at the meeting, said the parks department should be responsible for the things it purchases.

“What we spent money on is what we would be responsible for,” Gray said. “If we didn’t spend money on it then we shouldn’t be responsible for it. It’s simple and clean to me.”

A Memorandum of Understanding will be developed and likely voted on at the next regular meeting, commissioners agreed.

“Then we just submit it as a parks commission,” Ingram said.

“That will help me plan,” Dudley responded. “It’s hard to plan when you don’t know exactly how much is going to get put on your plate.”

OTHER ACTIONS

Dudley told commissioners some improvements to Basin Spring Park are planned to start soon, including repairs on stairs going up to the bandshell.

“We’re going to try to get it going soon,” Dudley said. “We want to get done before Spring Break when it gets busy. They’re so narrow at the bottom that if you’re carrying a drum set or something it’s impossible. Plus, the wood is starting to rot. So, that has to be fixed.”

Work is also ongoing to update and repair cabins at Lake Leatherwood, Dudley told commissioners.

“Cabins 2, 3 and 4, as well as Cabin 1, are going through some pretty serious renovations, which is nice,” he said. “Cabin 1 needed it bad. Like you always feel bad for letting people stay in there. So, we’re tearing out all the carpeting and doing hardwood flooring, repainting, doing siding and some sheetrock and hopefully it’ll turn out really nice.

“Some of the roofs are getting replaced, which was paid for through insurance by the Municipal League.”

The commission also approved increasing the budget for a skid-steer front loader by $10,000 after a tractor was sold for much more than the $5,000 anticipated.

“We ended up selling the tractor for a lot more than we thought we were going to get,” Dudley said. “We got $14,200 for it, which I was surprised. Now, the plan was to use an additional $10,000 on top of whatever we made from the tractor to buy a more efficient front-end loader. I’m going to wait until the end of the year to probably make that purchase to see how we’re doing because it’s sort of a cherry-on-top kind of item.”

The commission also discussed the procedure for destroying documents that are more than seven years old that are taking up storage space.

“We’ve got a lot of stuff, and I like to call it a fire starter,” Dudley said. “…A lot of it is very boring dry stuff … and if we’re not required by law to keep these things then I don’t want to just keep storing them.”

Commissioners said they wanted to look into what the city’s process is for getting rid of old documents and follow that policy.