ENFIED, N.Y.—On Wednesday, August 10, the Enfield Town Board heard a proposal to create a park during its regular monthly meeting, and took steps to form a committee for the proposed park.

Isabel Castillo, deputy supervisor of the Town of Enfield, gave the board a presentation on the park. Castillo said that the purpose of creating a park is to create and promote safe and enjoyable recreation experience by enriching the community’s space.

The park would include attractions such as gazebos, play stuctures and trails, among more. She used other parks, such as Montgomery Park in Dryden and Myers Park in Newfield, as examples of how the park could be designed.

“What I find really interesting is that it’s community built,” Castillo said of Myers Park. “A lot of fundraising was done for this park, and you can see on the fencing there are some names, people have donated, and you can have your name up there depending on donation.”

According to Castillo, the park project has a fluid and unstructured timeline. The first step would be to designate the property as a park by local law. She proposed creating a park committee, then using the outdoor comprehensive plan as a guide for what to incorporate into the proposed park, which makes them eligible for state-funded grants, although it would also require fundraising.

The park committee would serve to establish the rules for using the park and publicize the park. It will consist of the Deputy Supervisor, interested councilpersons, interested department heads and appointed Enfield residents. 

“We’re not really limiting it,” Castillo said. “I think the more voices we have in the committee, the better, so we can all have an input.”

Castillo said that while deadlines for federal and state funding opportunities are coming up at the end of August, if the parks committee starts seeking grants immediately, they can apply for annual grants for next year to fund the park, such as the Trails Program, the Parks Grant Program and the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership Program.

Xiqian Zhang, an intern for the town of Enfield, presented the board with a list of possible funding opportunities for the park.

Redmond proposed a motion to recruit prospective park committee members via the town website, which the board passed. She said that once the board has enough people to form the committee, the board will vote on a resolution to form the committee at a future meeting.

“The next thing we would like to do is to put that language on the [town of Enfield] website,” Redmond said, “and encourage residents to join in on this committee, and start looking potentially at structures and funding and locations and just get more into working with other partner organizations and see if we can get this to take off and see if residents are interested in seeing this move forward.”

Other News

  • The Town Board voted to approve a resolution written by Robert Lynch, a member of the board, urging Governor Kathy Hochul to sign legislation to reduce volunteer firefighter and EMS volunteer property tax assesment as much as 10%. In April, the Enfield Town Board had passed a similar resolution urging the Tompkins County Legislature to approve New York Home Rule legislation that would permit local governments like the town of Enfield and local taxing authorities to apply up to a 10% reduction for property tax assessments to qualifying volunteer firefighters and EMS volunteers.
  • The Town Board voted to approve resolutions to pave and install new lighting in the Salt Barn. The paving will be done by Seneca Stone Corporation and will cost $53,942, while the electrical installation will be done by Shisler Electrical Contractor and will cost $13,998.