MOUNT VERNON — On Tuesday, Sept. 21, community volunteers will be working together to spruce up the parks in Mount Vernon as part of the United Way of Knox County’s Community Care Day, according to Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Mavis.
“The United Way volunteers, including employees from Rolls-Royce, get everybody together to kick off the United Way campaign,” the mayor said. “Then they work three to four hours at various community parks.”
The kick off at Riverside Park will follow a lunch at noon. Work will then be completed by volunteers around town at various parks and playgrounds, as well as other sites throughout the county.
“They will be putting new shingles on one of the two dugouts at the Dan Emmett baseball field,” Mavis said.
“At Hiawatha Park they will plant 30 trees in pre-dug holes along the new parking lot,” the mayor said. “The new trees should accomodate a separation to the neighbor to the north.”
Volunteers will also be spreading mulch in the playground area at Riverside Park, and staining the soccer shed at the competition field off Fountain Street.
Swings will be painted at the neighborhood playground on Arch Avenue on the west end, and at Memorial Park.
The mayor said residents may have noticed large equipment in the area of Ohio 229 and Harcourt Road recently, where graders have been working to level one of the fields.
“The game field across the bridge and to the right where the sludge fields are — they needed practice fields and it wasn’t very flat there, where there is a lot of unevenness to it,” Mavis explained.
The city is going to level, grade and reseed the area.
“We’re creating another soccer field,” he said. “In the meantime they will be practicing at Hiawatha.”
In other city business, Mavis said the city has participated in the POW/MIA vigil on Public Square for years, but low turnout has caused officials to look at ways to draw more people to the event.
“Saturday, Sept. 25, we will be having the vigil on the front steps of the Memorial Building,” the mayor said, adding that he hoped people downtown visiting the farmers market on the square, may take a few minutes to attend the vigil in honor of our military men and women who went to war and remain unaccounted for.
Local vocalist Ashley Burke, Joe Bell and the Heritage Singers will be providing music for the vigil.
