By Sarah Hall

Editor

Lysander will not be hosting a summer playground program this year.

The six-week program, held at Lysander Town Park on Smokey Hollow Road, just can’t compete with the other programs in the area, according to Recreation Supervisor Tony Burkinshaw.

“Our numbers have been slowly declining over years,” Burkinshaw said. “We were averaging anywhere from 20 to 25 kids and on a good week, maybe 30 kids depending on the field trip that we were doing… and it was one week we’d have 15 and another week we’d have 30, and the following week we’d have 10.”

Burkinshaw pointed out that there are other similar programs for families throughout Baldwinsville — Van Buren has a playground program, and Radisson, Beaver Lake and St. Mary’s Church all have summer offerings.

“There’s just too many hands in this little community to also have one with dwindling numbers,” he said.

The town is looking to apportion its resources more efficiently, Burkinshaw said.

“One of the things the supervisor asked me to do is, ‘Let’s take the money that was allocated towards the summer playground program, look at things that you need in the park for this upcoming year, let’s try to get the spray park built, and if we can get it built, that we take another look at the possibility of reviving the summer playground program,’” he said. “That way there with the spray park being built, it gives kids something to do, and it might draw some interest where people are like, ‘Okay, now there are things to do at our park.’ Maybe it’ll drum up some interest where kids would want to join our playground program.”

Burkinshaw said the addition of the spray park — the bonding for which residents will vote on this Friday, May 4 — has the potential to galvanize the town park.

“Something like this could re-energize the park,” he said. “It could re-energize our playground program. It could energize our department as a whole, and that’s kind of what we need.”

Burkinshaw said that the town will re-examine the playground program’s place in the budget come next year.

“I mean, it’s not like it’s dead and never going to come back. It’s one of those things that, like, let’s take a pause from it and see if we can use that money towards other things in the park,” he said. “One of them being, if this project [the spray park] gets built, that we would put some money towards that project as far as staffing it and what our water expenses are going to be. Once we get a year under our belt and seeing what all that’s going to cost us, do we have money in there to maybe bring this back and see if we can make improvements on it.”

The spray park vote will take place from noon to 9 p.m. Friday, May 4, at Lysander Town Hall. See our infographic for more information on the spray park funding proposition.