City sets new priorities for 2017 Mozingo spending

TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Following a year of explosive development at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park, municipal staff has drafted a quieter set of priorities at the city-owned reservoir for the upcoming budget year. Now that plans for a new conference center and hotel are funded and moving forward, projects in 2017 will focus on maintenance and conservation, including installation of erosion-preventing riprap along the lake’s western shore and on either side of the dam.

Spending plans for Mozingo Lake Recreation Park were released this week by City Hall as municipal staff continues to fine tune the fiscal 2017 budget prior to approval next month by the Maryville City Council.

It’s going to be a different kind of year at Mozingo. With a flurry of development projects either completed or well underway, Assistant City Manager Ryan Heiland, the 3,000-acre park’s lead administrator, is recommending a renewed emphasis on maintenance and conservation.

The past 12 months have been perhaps the most dramatic in the park’s history since it opened to the public more than 20 years ago.

Voter approval of an eighth-of-a-cent sales tax paved the way for soon-to-begin construction of a $3.4 million conference center. In addition, private fundraising and investment led to the creation of the Watson 9 youth golf course and construction, now under way, of a new 40-room hotel by Boulders Inn & Suites.

By contrast, next year is going to seem downright quiet. But Heiland said Wednesday there will still be a lot going on, it just won’t be as noticeable.

“We’re just going to take a year after everything that’s been going on, and make sure we are taking care of out existing amenities,” he said.

First off, the city is expected to spend more than $100,000 on efforts to install riprap — multiple tons of boulder-like rock — along the shoreline of the Mozingo reservoir in an effort to control erosion, which in some areas has become a significant problem.

Riprapping the six-mile-long lake, or at least a large portion of it, is a project city officials say will take years, but one that is important to the impoundment’s long-term viability as the City of Maryville’s primary water source.

Thus, continuing efforts to control erosion are a primary goal for both the council and the Mozingo Lake Advisory Committee, which exercises considerable influence with regard to park maintenance and development.

Heiland said about a mile and half of shoreline has been riprapped this year, or soon will be, mostly on the lake’s east side.

In 2017, he said, the effort will be expanded to key locations on the western shore and on either side of the dam at the reservoir’s south end. Included will be rock so placed as to prevent the silting up of a cove where large pipes suck water into the city’s drinking water system.

Heiland said the lake’s $122,000 capital improvements budget includes $30,000 for riprapping, and that an additional $75,000 for new rock will come from the city’s Water and Sewer Fund.

The total proposed Mozingo budget adds up to a little more than $2 million, about the same as last year, with approximately half that amount coming from user fees paid by park patrons and the other half generated by a half-cent sales tax renewed by voters in April.

Expected 2017 spending at the lake embraces three full-time positions, including a maintenance worker job Heiland said is necessary due to the Watson 9 golf course and other new facilities, such an eighth rental cabin. He said completion of the conference center next year will place demands on the maintenance staff as well.

The remaining two jobs are both professional positions and include an events coordinator, whose primary duty will be to market and book the conference center, and a second recreation coordinator charged with ramrodding special events and activities like organized youth camps, the junior golf program, corporate team-building sessions at the Mozingo Outdoor Education Recreation Area, the annual 4th of July celebration, and October’s Haunted Campground celebration.

Existing recreation coordinator Brandon Cartwright will remain in his current slot, which primarily has to do with RV, cabin, and primitive camping reservations and services; information booth operations; and associated programming.

The two professional positions more or less replace the spot once held by former park operations manager Erick Auxier, a job the city has decided not to fill, at least for now.

Other projects in the proposed budget include completing integration of the Watson 9 and Sechrest 18 golf course irrigation systems into a single automated unit, which will be controlled from a computer and largely eliminate the need for manual operation.

The system will be programmable so that different sections of both golf courses can be watered, or not, depending on conditions.

Other line items include replacing four driving range pads, three of which have been removed to make way for new construction. A longer, single pad is planned that will be accessible to golf carts.

Additional spending totaling $36,000 is to be set aside for the purchase of a new front-deck mower and signage for the conference center and main entrance to the golf complex.

A total of $65,000 is proposed for marketing, including $10,000 for Watson 9 and conference center advertising as well as funds for trade show attendance, billboards, radio, television, internet radio, and increased consumer awareness in Kansas City and Omaha, Nebraska.