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Cecil Township supervisors discuss park improvements

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Cecil Township supervisors discussed the state of the township’s parks and ways to improve them, during a Monday night meeting.

The supervisors approved a resolution to allow the parks board to “address physical amenities” in the parks, and have more of a role in making improvements to the parks. The supervisors said that up to this point, the parks and recreation board has mostly organized events in the parks, but has not overseen major improvement projects or purchases.

“I would like that board to be more of a recommending body to the supervisors,” Supervisor Eric Sivavec said.

Supervisor Cindy Fisher said the parks have “never been a priority,” which is why she’s been trying to push for larger parks budgets.

“Last year we finally got a larger budget for the parks,” she said. “The auxiliary parks desperately need attention. They’ve been neglected for 20 years.”

Cecil Park is the township’s largest park and receives the most attention. The three auxiliary parks are in Hendersonville, Lawrence and Southview.

Cecil resident Wendy Johnson said the playground equipment at Southview is rusted and Lawrence has only three swings and a ball park.

“Lawrence park doesn’t even have a bench,” she said. “All these years, they’ve only paid attention to Cecil Park. We have these auxiliary parks, and we need to put some money into them.”

Johnson spoke Monday about a Facebook page she started, “Cecil Comm-UNITY Parks.” On it, she’s posted polls for each of the parks that residents can use to vote on different amenities they’d like to see at each. Also posted on the page is a link to an online petition urging the supervisors to not decrease the parks budget this year.

“The petition started after the last budget meeting, two weeks ago,” she said.

Fisher said the supervisors had discussed dropping the parks budget from what it was last year, $200,000, to $100,000. During Monday’s meeting, however, multiple supervisors were in favor of a larger budget for the parks. The next budget meeting is expected to be held at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in the municipal building.

“I’d like to see that budget go to $300,000,” Supervisor Ronald Fleeher said. “With more people moving into Cecil, we owe it to them to fix up our parks.”

The supervisors also discussed allowing any interested resident to serve on the parks auxiliary board, which is made up of volunteers.

“There are a lot of people who want to help out in the parks,” Fisher said. “We just need to be more welcoming.”

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