Busy season with Grove upgrades, new planning commissioner

You might think that with the weather we are getting the last couple of years that we don’t have seasons anymore, but that is far from the truth. Why, as we speak, Councilmember Howard Geller is working hard to line up yet another great spring and summer season of Music in the Park. That is right, before you know it, it will be May and we will be hearing music downtown. In that same vein, our city maintenance staff is doing its own gearing up. Signs are up to inform you of the closure of The Grove park playground for replacement of the resilient play surface. We get so much use for this playground that it is just darn worn out and needs replacement.

Work is scheduled to start on Monday, Feb. 9 with removal of the floor panels on the play equipment and tear-out of the old surface. We are going to work as fast as possible, but the closure of the playground might last through Friday, Feb. 27 depending on the weather conditions, and frankly I think we would all be ok with a delay caused by rain. Next up is the Water Play Feature upgrade project, which is still projected to start the week of Feb. 23, so watch out for construction and be happy that by summer we will be back in full force with upgraded features downtown.

This last week the city council appointed citizen Peter Hellman to the vacated position on the Planning Commission that resulted from Keith Haydon being elected to the council. As far as I can tell, the only disappointing thing about Peter is that he went to UC Berkeley instead of Stanford, but given his 37 years in real estate development, his love for and desire to give back to the community and his impeccable credentials, I am willing to cut him some slack and say Welcome, Peter!

The only downside of our search for a new commissioner was the fact that we had to pick one out of six awesome candidates. If any of these candidates had applied and been the only one we would have happily appointed them, but Peter shown brightest and we are lucky to have him.

The Council would like to thank candidates Marc Ventura, Eric Rehn, Scott DeVenney, Bruce Albert and Peter Cloven for stepping up and putting their hats in the ring. Look for their names in the future as they have a lot to give to this community.

In closing, a wise man or wiser woman once said, “If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.” On the lighter side, “Statistics show that the people who have the most birthdays live the longest.” Think about it….

Send email to the mayor at dshuey@ci.clayton.ca.us.