MILL CREEK METROPARKS Officials assure programs will stay

Twenty-six acres in Boardman will be forever wild.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
CANFIELD -- Despite staff and budget restructuring in Mill Creek MetroParks, programs for the public at the MetroParks Farm here and at Yellow Creek Park in Struthers will not suffer, park officials said.
Maggie Mullen of North Lima, a trustee of the Mahoning County Farm Bureau, and Robert D. Carcelli, Struthers City Council president, appeared before MetroParks commissioners Monday, expressing their concerns about the farm and park.
The farm bureau wants the Canfield facility to remain a working farm with a strong emphasis on public education, Mullen said. "It's so important that everybody has an opportunity for agricultural education," she told the commissioners.
"We plan on providing more service to the public, getting more people to this facility, and packaging the whole educational component for the schools," replied Susan Dicken, park executive director, who noted that the farm was open to the public during regular hours on summer weekends last year.
The summer weekend farm hours will continue this year, along with a host of special events, including the April animal baby shower, the spring plow day, a kite festival and summer jubilee, said Tom Bresko, recreation director.
Yellow Creek concerns
Carcelli said he was concerned about the staffing, security and maintenance of services at Yellow Creek Park. Commissioner M. Virginia Dailey assured him that commissioners intend to maintain services there.
Some 90 people attended an education program about raptors (predatory birds) Sunday; a concert featuring country musician Laurie James is planned for Wednesday; and boating education and Earth Day programs are planned this spring, all at Yellow Creek Park, Bresko said.
Last fall, the park district announced that three naturalists, one each at the farm, Yellow Creek Park and Mill Creek Park's Ford Nature Education Center, would be reduced from full-time to part-time status, and that employees would be moving out of rent-free park housing at Yellow Creek Park and Mill Creek Park's Fellows Riverside Gardens.
In other action, commissioners entered a conservation agreement with landowners guaranteeing that 26 wetland acres near Tanglewood Drive in Boardman would be forever kept in their natural state, and the park district would have access to the area for nature education programs and for construction of an observation deck. The area is the headwaters area for Cranberry Run, which flows into Mill Creek.
Bridge renovation
Commissioners also voted to apply for a federal grant for rehabilitation of the Suspension Bridge, an 1895-vintage steel bridge in Mill Creek Park. That project would cost $111,000, with 80 percent being federally funded and the remainder coming from local park funds.
Treasurer David Christy reported that the park district plans to spend $2.8 million on capital improvement projects this year, with $602,000 of that coming from the district's general fund and the remainder from federal and state grants and private donations.
By far the largest of the projects is construction of a $1.8 million bridge to carry the MetroParks Bikeway over Mahoning Avenue in Austintown. That project will be 100 percent federally funded.
Other projects include repaving Old Mill Drive and repairing a retaining wall along the East Cohasset Hike and Bike Trail, which collapsed during a heavy rain last summer, both in Mill Creek Park.