Friends of south park meeting

FRIENDS OF SOUTH PARK MEETING

MINUTES OF 5-20-15
Our May meeting started with reports on the recent activities. We have been a busy little group.
The Princess/Prince Ball net the group $1,000 in the bank and “500+ thank you and we had a wonderful times”.
The Golf Outing was a huge success with a net profit of $5,229.68 which also includes $350.00 to go toward the bocce courts. It was announced that next year’s outing will have a shot gun start for something different and to speed up the event for the golfers.

Sam McPherson’s team won the golf tourney and gave their $1,300 prize back to the Friends organization.

The discussion went into future events;
Rick Self brought his Children’s Fun Day in the Park that is planned for the end of August. He informed everyone that he has been able to get the State Fish Commission and South Park Township to help out with demonstrations. He stated that Wayne Perry is willing to make up flyers; Rick just has to come up with a logo for the event. Rick went on with ideas on who he would like to have helped out and plans he wants to have in the way of activities. At this point Sharon asked him to put his plans in writing and to meet with her with solid plans and how he is going to see these out so she knows what is going to be needed and to come up with a time plan up to the day of the event.
Joe Oliphant announced that a fountain similar to the one on Corrigan is being installed in the duck pond at the game preserve. It will not interfere with the ducks diving under the water and will be an easy maintenance fountain.

Sharon asked Joe if he was going to do the Pirates baseball game again this season and maybe not as big as last year. He responded yes he could and he will look into it. Those who went last year mentioned how much fun they had.

There were questions about the possible 5K being held and for now it is on hold.
In the coming future this summer there will be;
Car Cruise 7-26-15 Johnny Angel & The Halos will be performing. More details will be posted on the kiosk.
Leslie Morgan from Penn State Extension Service spoke at the meeting to let us know of the Demonstration Garden at the corner of Corrigan Drive and McConkey Rd. She want us to know that on August 15^th at 9 am they will be holding their annual “Garden in the Park” It is a free event with many booths and activities for kids, vendors and demonstrations for all. She advised us that we ourselves and the public are not permitted to touch any of the plantings in the garden but we are permitted to sit on the benches within the garden whenever we want. We can keep the deer away from the plants and the edible items.
Before we got into our guest speakers we got down to the business part of the meeting
There were no changes to the April minutes that had to be made.
Jim Converse gave his financial report of:
Checking account $ 24, 064.00

PayPal 2, 188.00

Foundation 2,050.00

Total 28,302.00

Anne Oyler spoke about the PayPal account. Now people can make their donations right from their PayPal account into ours. We have multi levels of donations for people,
Gold $100, Silver $50, Bronze $25 and Granite $10.
We have to stress that the checks must be made out to the Parks Foundation and have Friends of South Park written on the memo line so we get credited for the donation. The checks cannot be made out to the Friends of South Park since we do not have the non-profit designation or tax exemption.
A list of maintenance items within the park was presented to John of the public works department that need addressed urgently. He acknowledged the items but could not provide a time line of completion. He did inform everyone that the signs will be going up soon but did not say how soon. There was talk about Stone Manse and how it is a historic landmark and it needs to handle by historians. Most of the growth around it and it is weeds and invasive plants and have no worth except holding back soil.
During this time, the lighting along Corrigan Drive came up. This project has more or less stopped ever since the coordinator passed away. Sharon spoke about finding another lighting company so the project can get started again and we can get our light put up.
We talked about the installation of the checkers/chess tables and the bocce courts. Everybody got excited about these in a fun way. The checkers/chess tables will be along Corrigan Drive near the dek hockey area and one will be over near the fountain on Maple Springs Drive. The Bocce courts are possibly going on the other side of China Wall and other places are still being considered. The courts need to very flat and even.
We had two guest speakers for the night one was Ms. Michelle Dunn from Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful. She explained that we could apply for a grant to use it for any of our projects up $1000. The money can be spent on anything connected with the project. Sharon and Michelle met after the meeting to trade information and to get additional information for Andy.
The second guest or guests were from the South Park Library. Sharon, the head librarian spoke of all the various activities and events they have planned for the summer for both adults and children. They are looking into working with cycling groups as being a bicycle station for people to use on the Montour Trail. Sharon passed out brochures on the lineup of what is available for adults this summer and a special program to participate in.
We talked about making donations to charities like the food bank and making donations part of some of the events we hold. The Easter Egg Hunt brought in 400 lbs of food for the bank. After kicking it around we came up with the possibility of requesting donations at the children’s day in the park and the Halloween party. We would not make it an every event request, just every so often.
The question about the nature center came up and it was told that Rep. Matt Smith and Sue Means were working on a grant request for it. Sharon was going to look into the progress of it. (Since the meeting, Rep Matt Smith has resigned from his office to pursue a new career in the private sector).
We decided to cancel the July meeting because we wanted to. The June meeting is set for June 17^th at 7pm.
By this time we all readily agreed to go home.