New playground equipment will be available for kids at Gas this summer.
Gas councilmen approved a deal with the Fees Park Committee Tuesday evening to buy playground equipment costing about $9,000. It will be erected in the center of the park at the west edge of Gas.
Pat Spencer, chairman of the citizens Park Committee, said her group had raised $5,700 and asked that Gas loan the committee $3,300 to complete the deal.
“The equipment is $9,259 and we can get a 3 percent discount if we pay for it upfront,” Spencer said.
Councilmen agreed to the loan, which Spencer said the committee would repay by Dec. 31, 2012.
The next park fundraiser will be a swap meet the first or second Saturday in June.
“If we don’t get enough interest in a swap meet, we’ll shift to a communitywide garage sale,” Spencer said.
Letters seeking donations to help pay for the playground equipment are being sent and a steel box will be put in the park soon as a receptacle for donations.
“I imagine a lot of people who use the park would be willing to give a few dollars if they had a safe place to put the money,” Spencer said.
The new playground equipment will be a self-contained unit with three slides and a tower.
A quarter-mile walking trail has helped make the park a popular destination.
CITY CLERK Rhonda Hill found a “treasure map,” while recently foraging through the city’s safe, she said. Hill discovered a 1906 fire map of Gas.
Mayor Darrell Catron laid the map out for councilmen to inspect Tuesday evening. It shows all of the buildings that were in Gas, a boomtown in the early 1900s when huge natural gas reserves were found in the area and were tapped to supply fuel for smelters and other factories.
“The map has all the industries and business buildings on it,” Catron said. “Some residents’ names have been written on it. We had three lumberyards then. The Thompson Hotel was here before being dismantled and moved to Virgil, where it became a boarding house.”
Councilmen agreed to loan the map to the Allen County Historical Society and later have it on display at Gas City Hall.
NEXT WEEK is cleanup week in Gas. Objects should be placed near the street, said Steve Robb, city superintendent.
He also noted that a clinic was scheduled Saturday from 9 to 11 a.m. at City Hall for residents to have pets vaccinated for rabies and to purchase city tags.
