Corbin leaders want public input on recreation

Corbin city leaders say they want public input and ideas for improved local recreation facilities, and plan to create public surveys regarding the issue in the near future.

Marlon Sams, the town’s Director of Recreation, said Tuesday that city officials have ideas for recreation facilities, but they want to know what tops the public’s list.

“We need to give people something to do besides the norm,” Sams said. “We’d like to see what the general public wants and what are the most popular ideas with people who live in the city.”

Sams said city leaders have hashed over ideas for bike trails, walking trails, horse trails, racquetball courts, enclosure of the public pool, picnic shelters and other ideas.

“I’d love to do something like enclosing the pool so we could use it all year long,” Corbin Mayor Willard McBurney said. “That’s’ a great idea I’ve always thought would be worth doing.”

City Commissioner Phil Gregory said he would like to see land in the city’s two industrial parks used to create trails, picnic areas and for other outdoor activities.

“It would be a good walk and it would be out of the way of everything,” he said. “That park, in our lifetime, is not going to be taken up for anything. Look at the way the economy is now. We could have a big place to walk and it could be done for very little costs.”

McBurney said he encourages citizens to get creative with their suggestions and said there will be no right answer to the surveys.

“We just want to know what people think … what the majority wants so that we can work on that,” he said.
Copies of the survey will be available in the near future on www.thenewsjournal.net and will also be published in the newspaper. Sams said once released, city leaders will likely accept surveys through February.

The mayor said he’d like to see the process culminate in a public hearing early next year where citizens could come and interact with city leaders about some of the suggestions.