Grand Island: Town Board authorizes supervisor to purchase splash pad

By Alice Gerard

Senior Contributing Writer

The Grand Island Town Board at its June 1 meeting authorized Supervisor Peter Marston to sign a contract for the purchase of a splash pad from Vortex , a splash pad manufacturer, for $708,806.41. The vote was 3-1, with the dissenting vote coming from Councilman Dan Kilmer. Marston was listed as excused from the meeting.

This vote came after extensive discussion, which centered on a number of issues, including the amount of money it would take to fully fund the project, a potential private donor, cost increases, and the option for additional grant money.

Kilmer explained, “I’m not against the splash pad. I’m against using taxpayer money if we don’t have to. We have an individual who may be willing to pick up the tab, and we could vote on it next month. Maybe in 30 days, we’ll get a commitment.”

Kilmer also mentioned the purchase price is more than the $477,000 left over from a $1.1 million grant to the Grand Island Miracle League, which has a baseball diamond and a playground that have been adapted for use by children with special needs.

Deputy Town Supervisor Tom Digati pointed out that the grant money was intended to be used for the splash pad: “We’ve got money. To walk away from grant money would be a mistake.”

“My No. 1 concern is giving grant money back,” Councilwoman Rhonda Diehl said. “We just sat with five different companies to interview for grants, and every single one of those grant writers said the very worst thing you could ever do is to give money back and not fulfill a project because they’re counting on your community to do what you’re saying you’re going to do.”

Elaine O’Neill, the town’s grant writer, is “working on exploring other options for grants to fill the gap,” Diehl said.

“I agree (with Diehl),” Digati said. “Leave no stone unturned with respect to trying to get other opportunities for this to get paid for. For the time being, if we can take what was bonded, and I think this dates back to 2021, when we got the grant from Erie County. Between the $1.3 million that was bonded back then and the $85,000, which is going to come out of the recreation fund, which is not money that is contributed to from the tax levy. Your tax money, what you pay in property taxes, doesn’t go toward that. It’s a separate fund. We’re bridging that gap to get a functional splash pad without anything other than the money we anticipated spending.”

“We’re supposed to use that money for parks and recreation,” Councilman Jose Garcia said. “I can’t think of a better way to do it at this point, other than a splash pad that’s ready to be integrated and people have been talking about for years. We can all agree that we don’t like how we got here, that we had to learn from the fire hose from the past month. We can do this the right way. We do have a path forward.

“I do understand that this thing is scalable. It’s fully functional and scalable. We can hold tight. We’re going to build this bare-bones thing and hope it’s the catalyst that encourages the donor to follow through and seize the enthusiasm from our town on how they can be helping our community. I think it’s important to send that message.”

“We know that $700,000 doesn’t get us the whole project,” Kilmer said. “This is a million-dollar project at the end of the day if we do it right. I went past one in Tonawanda today. They have all these white lounge chairs. I don’t want to halve this by spending only $700,000. If the individual commits to $600,000, we could have it all.”

Diehl said, “It’s my understanding, and let’s clarify this, the splash pad goes down and this additional work and the additional amenities can be added to afterward. It’s not going to damage anything done.”

One of the reasons for the increase in costs is the proposed location for the splash pad.

Digati explained, “One of the things that drove the cost increase ended up by being placement. This thing is anticipated to go where the old ice rink was at Veterans Park. The issue was it was an ice rink that was filled in with fill, which wasn’t stable, which added significant cost to the installation of this thing, to make sure we didn’t put it in to have it cave in because it wasn’t put on a solid base. Is that the best place for it? No, but we are where we are.”