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Marseilles looks to consulting services to help Knudson Park development · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Marseille looks to consulting services to help Nudson Park development.
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  Written by Matthias Werner, This article is being read by
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  an automated voice brought to you by Everlett. The City
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  of Marseille is committing funds to help develop and improve
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  Nudson Park. City officials voted to approve a thirteen thousand,
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  five hundred dollars proposal for professional consulting services with JSD
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  Professional Services to help with open spaceland acquisition and development
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  grant opportunities. What we're doing here with the OSLAD grant
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  is spending the thirteen thousan five hundred dollars to get
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  drawings blueprints on what the JSD want to do and
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  talk to the public about what changes they want to
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  see in the park. Accounts and Finance Commissioner Bobby Kaminsky said,
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  if it does go and we do get the OSLAD grant,
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  we could take those drawings and give it to them
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  and then they can get us funding for it. The
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  decision to approve this proposal was not universal on the
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  city council or among those present at its latest meeting.
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  Michael Munsey, a member of the Marseilles Beautification Committee, asks
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  city officials why they need to pay for further grant
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  writing when residents already pay monthly for the service of
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  grant writing. Munsey said that the committee is opposed to
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  the proposal and doesn't recognize the need to spend a
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  sizeable amount of money on projects related to development at
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  Nudson Park. It's already extremely underutilized, but it just needs
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  good hard work done, Munsey said. Throwing money on the
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  property that we can't properly maintain in the first place
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  and having it mostly maintained by volunteer service is not
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  the way to go with our downtown park. City officials
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  cited the lack of engineering grants available and the hesitancy
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  of state officials to give funding to projects that might
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  never be built as there's reasons why they chose to
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  go with the consulting route, hoping to make it easier
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  to receive the open spaceland acquisition and development grant funding
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  in the future. One official who did not share in
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  the majority's opinion was Streets and Improvements Commissioner Mike Shib.
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  Not to be combative, but I do agree with the
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  speaker from the beautification committee, Shibe said, we can be
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  encouraging the use of nudsen for less of a price
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  than spending money on development. Shibe cited generating more buzz
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  for events at the park like concerts, as a potential
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  alternative to the proposal before committing sizeable funds to consulting
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  services and a development project. Shibe was outvoted three to
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  one and the proposal was approved.