Dog owners in the city of Weyburn and surrounding areas were happy when word came out that an off-leash dog park would be opened in the city.
Seemingly, this was an idea whose time had come, as it featured two separate areas, one for larger and one for smaller dogs, and involved volunteers and local businesses, not to mention the City of Weyburn, which allowed for a piece of the Tatagwa Parkway to be used for this purpose.
Now, residents might give pause to wonder if indeed now was the time to have such a park built. It's too late for that, of course, because the facility was set up and is in place on the Red Coat Trail, just south of First Avenue NW, across from the former Souris Valley grounds.
The city has been approached, through the city's Parks Board, to take over the care and maintenance of the dog park, and to take care of the insurance coverage for the park as well.
The reason given to the Parks Board by two representatives of the dog park committee is that they have not been able to pull together enough volunteers to do the maintenance of the park, such as the cutting of the grass and emptying of the garbage cans.
The dog park committee said they would continue to look after whatever donations come in for the park, but otherwise, they are requesting the city to look after this area. As the Parks board didn't have quorum present, they weren't able to deal with the request just then - but one has to wonder if the city's staff would want to have this added to their plate. They already look after a rather large amount of green space throughout the city, not least of which are areas like River Park that still require a lot of repair and maintenance work from the flooding of 2011.
So is it fair for the dog park group to ask this of the city, along with assuming the financial cost of insurance coverage?
Perhaps this is a situation where the city should consider whether they were too quick to allow the dog park group to move forward with their park, if they're not prepared to continue taking care of it.
Where are all the dog owners in Weyburn? Are they not making use of the park, or wouldn't they want to? Maybe a new group should be struck to look after the park; meantime, the city should consider their policies about the use of city park land.
