The direction of parks and recreation in the city could be changing.
The department in charge of managing parks and the recreational facilities and programs in the city is undertaking a 10-month process to overhaul, examine and formulate a new plan for the future in the delivery of those services.
Last week city council awarded a $69,470 contract for the construction of a parks and recreation master plan to the group Professional Environment Recreation Consultants (PERC), said city director of parks and recreation, Trisha Davison.
She said the master plan will be a guiding document with a long-term plan attached to it, designed as a living document to aid decision making over the next 10 to 12 years.
“It will have solicited the community through a whole variety of ways to gauge their input and thought on recreation services, as to where they are today and what they think is working well and what is missing as far as the service is considered in the community as a whole,” Davison said. “We want to ensure we are meeting the needs of the community and this is one way that really hones in on community engagement.”
Davison said the master plan will look at facilities within Trail and consider changing trends in parks and recreation services across the province and country.
PERC will devise a master plan through a series of community engagement and stakeholder meetings and workshops that will happen over the next 10 months, gauging what the community wants and then laying out a plan to help guide how the recreation department delivers that service.
There will be an opportunity for people to share stories as far as what they would like to see in recreation services in the area, said Davison. Once the plan is done, PERC will host a public meeting, opening it up for comments. Ultimately, it gets presented back to the community at the very end, said Davison.
The next step begins in the next few weeks with a community survey being mailed out to residents.