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01/01/1976 - Advisory Parks & Recreation CommissionReport Work Acclompished 1976 Eagan Park Department had a real good year for completing extra dabs amd up grading of city parks, because of the dry season. We made a two mile walking and cross country ski trail in Patrick Eagan Park. We had some help by concerned persons who had some experience in laying them out. We did the actual work of cutting out all brush and mowing. We put up signs along the trail to assure people they were an the path. We will be putting rest areas in the park and possibly a picnic area. We also made a walking trail and cross country ski trail at Blackhawk that is 12 mile long. Eagan has a total of three and a half miles of trails in wooded and wild parks. They will be maintained in the summer for walkers and nature lovers, and main- tained in the winter for cross country skiers. We regraded the ground at Carnelian to up grade our pleasure skating rink, Public Works helped us out with the grader. This is a job we would have normally contracted out but we wanted to try it ourselves to see what we are capable of and to save money. We completed that job in 27 hours and it cost us less than one half of what a contractor would have charged. We had skateable ice two weeks earlier than usual because of what we graded. Due to the interest and growth of Eagan we added three more soccer fields and practice football fields. We made our own goals and striped the fields on a regular base with our exist- ing fields. We also striped foul lines on all our baseball fields. We weren't able to do them in the past years because of lack of help and equipment. We took over nine of the baseball fields at Metcalf Jr. High on May 15, 1976. We are now maintaining 30 ball diamonds, 5 soccer fields, 2 practice soccer fields and 3 foot- ball fields in the summer, in the winter we maintain 7 hockey rinks, 8 pleasure rinks and 2 ponds for skating. In the spring of 1976 we disced up some land behind the Public Works garage and planted 660 Norway Pine and 160 Ponderosa Pine. We planted 70 Norway Pine on Blackhawk Cove Road to help hide a lift station. We then added to our nursery on Gold Trail by add- ing 338 Ginella Maples, 96 Norway Pine, 398 Honeysuckle and 121 Ponderosa Pine. When these trees grow up in a few years we will transplant them to City Park. We have made good use of the shrubs Blue Cross gave us in 1975. We have planted some at City Hall and around the new Public Works Garage. We donated a lot of shrubs to garden clubs that wanted to make a planting area in our City Parks. We helped them prepare the ground and plant. We used our new flusher truck for water. Northview School Parent Teachers Orginiza- tion planted pines on the school property, we volunteered our services to water them. Happy to say all planting areas and nureries are doing real good with very little kill. The full time city employees worked 266 hours on diseased trees in city park. C.E.T.A. employees worked 186 hours. If possible we will get a permit to burn on the site where there were a lot of trees. If we couldn't burn we would haul them back to the Public Works Garage and burn them at the burning site we had made for disposal of diseased trees. People who had diseased trees in their yards would cut them down and haul them to our garage and we would burn them and keep control over the fire. During our slack season we made them shelter to go out to places where we didn't have a warminghouse for the skaters, so the kids would have a place to put their skates on and to get out of the wind to warm up. We then tore down the old warming house at Cedar Pond that was all rotted and replaced it with a different house, we bought in Lakeville. The Eagan Lions bought a flag and flag pole for Cedar Pond. We put in the concrete base for it and put the pole up. We then planted shrubs from our nursery at Gold Trail around it. They had a presentation of the flag during the 4th of July celebration. We have a lot of plans for the 1977 season and hope we can complete as much as we did in 1976. James McGuffee City Park Department and all park employees