BUCKHANNON – The Buckhannon Consolidated Public Works Board recently approved an initiative proposed by West Virginia Wesleyan College to clean up the Dog Park at the Buckhannon Riverwalk Park.
Jessica Vincent, leadership and service program assistant at West Virginia Wesleyan College, attended the March 26 CPWB meeting to propose a volunteer clean-up day at the Dog Park.
“Whenever the dog park was created, the WE LEAD Animal Welfare team was a tiny piece of helping push that through and getting that oriented. Now, because it has been in existence for a little bit longer, a lot of our current students may or may not know it actually exists,” Vincent said. “We want to bring awareness to the dog park, and we think we can do that through a volunteer opportunity to do the cleanup while providing awareness to our campus.”
Vincent said students who have Emotional Support Animals could benefit from knowing there is a dedicated space to let their dogs play.
“The emotional support animals on campus are often in a residence hall, in a very small dorm area, so whenever we can help encourage getting them out, it helps the whole community environment,” Vincent said. “That’s also part of the plan and the promotion of this event.”
Mayor Robbie Skinner said they appreciated the college’s help and made a motion to approve the event request. The motion passed unanimously.
Later in the CPWB meeting, Skinner also updated the board on a request made by the Animal Care and Control Board to update equipment at the Dog Park.
“There was a request from Lisa Critchfield to upgrade the obstacles in the dog park, so what we said we would do is pass the request on to Consolidated as a referral to evaluate it and see what other obstacles could be added,” Skinner said. “There is roughly $15,000 in the dog park fund that we could use for some of these things. Those are all pretty much private donations made to the dog park for upkeep and additional obstacles.”
He noted CPWB could also pull a little extra money from their budget if they find something that really fits the space.
“We have some flexibility there to see what we could put in the park. We could probably ask Consolidated for maybe a little extra money, if need be, depending on what is desired there,” Skinner said. “I don’t know if there’s any action to be taken, but that’s where this came from.”
Public Works director Ethan Crosten said some of their playground equipment suppliers also offer dog park equipment, and he would investigate the best options.
