City seeks citizen participation in park survey

What do you think of Big Spring's City Parks? What changes, improvements, or amenities in local parks would you like to see prioritized in the coming years?

The city is in the process of crafting a new Parks Master Plan, and your input on the subject is requested.

“We are redoing our Parks Master Plan because we are going out for several grants next year again, including the Texas Parks and Wildlife grant we applied for last year,” said Community Services Director Hayley Herrera. “One of the things that helps you earn more points with the points system for the grants is having an updated Parks Master Plan, and ours was last updated in 1999.”

Herrera said part of the process in updating the Parks Master Plan is a survey of local citizens.

“Part of that plan is a survey that is taken by the citizens of Big Spring that kind of helps us know what the citizens want, that we can accomplish moving forward, if possible,” she said. “That's the whole point behind the survey. We know what our plans are and what our hopeful future projects are, but it's really helpful to hear constructive comments from the citizens that we can hopefully also enact.”

Herrera spoke about what you can expect when you take the survey.

“A lot of the questions are asking really what parks they visit the most. Also, what they would like to see us update, like, if they visit Comanche Trail Park the most, we're asking what updates you'd like to see in the parks,” she said. “We also ask them to rate all the parks from 'Excellent' to 'Poor', and we also ask them to rank some of the other things that we have...if they want to see more neighborhood parks, more hiking/biking trails, those kinds of things. More lighting in the parks. Those are all ranked 'Definitely' to 'No Opinion.' Then we also have where people can just leave us comments. If we missed something, like say we accidentally left something off or there's something that somebody finds more important, we also have a comment section where they can leave their comment in their own words.”

Of course, Big Spring's most prominent city park is Comanche Trail Park, which contains such amenities as the Russ McEwen Family Aquatic Center, the Big Spring Municipal Golf Course, the Cotton Mize baseball/softball field, and the Historic Spring Site.

Other city parks include Bert Andries Park,