City Council Passes Revision to Aid Parks and Recreation with Downtown Flowers
By Chris Johnson on February 18, 2020
During a week when flowers were on a lot of minds for Valentine’s Day, Bridgeport Parks and Recreation was thinking a little further down the road.
At the most recent City Council meeting, a revision to the Capital Reserve Budget was approved that allows for $5,000 to go toward spring flowers for Main Street.
The budgeting for Main Street flowers was missed in the current budget because that expense was moved to the Capital Reserve the previous year.
There will be no impact on the budget as Hotel/Motel tax receipts will directly offset the expense.
“It’s normally an annual expense,” Parks and Recreation Director Joe Shuttleworth said. “The last few years it was kind of moved around in the budget so to speak and it was in as a capital item as opposed to a general fund item, therefore when I did the general fund budget I failed to recognize that and it didn’t get put back into the budget anywhere so that’s why I asked for a revision from our hotel/motel monies to complete that task.”
Parks and Recreation works with Freed’s Greenhouse when it comes to the flowers that can be seen throughout Bridgeport. The flowers usually have more of a patriotic color — red, white and blue — as they are up through the spring and summer holidays and a big part of the Veterans Memorial.
“(Freed’s) start those flowers about now,” Shuttleworth said. “They order the flowers we want and start them. We have a special basket we use on the poles and a special basket on the bridges. They start the flowers for us and we usually pick them up around Mother’s Day. Once the weather is warm enough they can survive, we have a full maintenance program we do every day to make sure they stay alive.
“Last year we did some solid red, white and blue pots, I think this year we may do some combination of several colors in each pot. We put a lot of flowers up on Main Street, at the Civic Center, at the pool and all the downtown bridges. I think the community likes it and appreciates it. It just makes it look really nice when you drive through town and see the flowers.”
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