PAWTUCKET -- Parks Commission meetings used to just have agendas.
Now they have an itinerary.
Beginning next week, the commission will meet outdoors, moving its
meetings from park to park in an effort to facilitate public input and
see first-hand how city parks and playgrounds have been improved.
The first meeting will be at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Payne Park, a park and
playground at West Avenue and Randall Street that underwent a $230,000
makeover two years ago.
The public is welcome. William A. Nesbitt, president of the Woodlawn
Neighborhood Association, has been formally invited.
But the event is strictly BYOC -- Bring Your Own Chair, Parks Commission
Chairman Henry S. Kinch Jr. said. "We're going to put our chairs in a
circle and have our meeting right there."
The Payne Park meeting will be followed by a meeting next month in
Veterans Memorial Park in Fairlawn, which has also been renovated. Kinch
said.
The Parks Commission doesn't meet in July and August. In September,
Kinch said, the commission plans to meet at the John Street Playground,
near Broadway and the George R. Bennett Industrial Highway. In October,
when the days get shorter and the end of daylight savings time
approaches, Kinch said, the meetings may have to be moved back indoors.
The Park Commission, a nine-member advisory body, usually meets in the
Slater Memorial Park office of William D. Mulholland, superintendent of
parks and recreation.
Kinch said the outdoor meetings were encouraged by Mulholland, who
thought it would be a good idea if commission members got out and saw
the improvements that have been made to city parks.
