MANSFIELD — The Richland County Park District Board is going to get 40 percent larger.
The current three-member volunteer board of commissioners, who oversee a district formed in 1965, voted unanimously Monday to add two seats to a governing body responsible for a wide array of parks and attractions.
Two of those board members, Cindy Strader and Rhonda Berry, joined district Director Jason Larson on Tuesday morning for a 2023 budget hearing with county commissioners.
The local park district includes sites such as the 18.4-mile B&O Bike Trail, the Gorman Nature Center and the recently added Fleming Falls, among others.
Larson said the approved resolution will be sent to county Probate Court Judge Kelly Badnell, who appoints park district board members by state law (ORC 1545.05).
Each board member is appointed to a three-year term and serves without pay. According to the district’s website, the “RCPD Board of Park Commissioners create an annual and long term plan of operation that protects the Richland County Park District’s vision.”
The third current park commissioner is Eric Miller.
“We have got some names that have come in already,” Larson told commissioners. “When it’s incorporated as a park district, it’s three and you have the option of moving to five with a majority of the board making that decision.”
“So, hopefully January 1st, we’ll have two new board members,” he said.
County Commissioner Tony Vero said a three-person board puts a lot of responsibility on people if one of the three can’t make it.
Park board commissioners meet on the last Monday of each month at 5:30 p.m. at Gorman Nature Center, 2295 Lexington Ave., in Mansfield. The public is welcome to attend these meetings.
Larson said having five members creates a greater possibility of having a voting quorum for meetings. It said it also allows for two-member committees, which is not possibility for a three-member board under the state’s public meetings laws.
Commissioner Darrell Banks encouraged Larson and the board commissioners to issue a press release announcing the new seats in the event some county residents may be interested in serving.
Larson said new park board commissioners are often selected from the Friends of the Richland County Park District, a non-profit established in 1984 to provide volunteer assistance to the park district.
“Those people are typically volunteers and they do things and raise money for the park district,” Larson said.
“Hopefully by the time we would be looking at terms being up for new park board members and those new folks coming in now, we have people who have an understanding of how a board works and how meetings happen and they have a more intimate understanding of the park district,” Larson said.
The director said plans are still in place to repave the bike trail, which connects Mansfield to Butler. He said the Richland County engineer’s office and the Richland County Regional Planning Commission are trying to clarify if the project needs a separate overall manager.
Larson said local officials could then seek bids for the engineering and design of the repaving project, which he hopes could be done this winter.
“The money is there. The match is there. All the funds have been raised and we are hoping it could happen as early as 2023 or possibly the summer of 2024,” Larson said.
In the interim, he said, the district has ordered equipment that will help with the bumps on the trail and also the tree roots.
“We’re trying to mitigate as many of the issues as we can with the trail, knowing that we’re gonna have a full repave done potentially as early as next summer.
“We don’t want to go out there and spend an enormous amount of money out of our bike trail maintenance fund, if it’s gonna turn around six months later and have all the work done with the repave,” Larson said.
