
'IT'S OUR PARK, TELL US THE LOCATION,' this dog may have said if capable of speech.
SEYMOUR — The town has a location for a dog park picked out but won’t share that location with the public or, presumably, any dogs, just yet.
“I don’t say anything unless I have a written agreement with signed contracts in hand,” Seymour First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis said.
While Drugonis wouldn’t name the location where the dog park will be going, she did say the winning locale is one of the following publicly-owned properties: French Memorial Park, Chatfield Park, an area in the Keith Mitchell Forest, Sochrin’s Pond and the Seymour Community Center.
So using that information and this being the Internet: here’s a poll asking you where you want to see the dog park!
Never mind, the editor can’t figure out how to make a poll in Expression Engine.
Drugonis said she’ll reveal her administration’s preferred dog park location at a meeting of the Seymour Board of Selectmen scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday (Aug. 2) at Seymour Town Hall.
Drugonis said she and several department heads over the past few weeks visited the various contenders around town, and settled on a property that has at least three to five acres.
The dog park will be on publicly-owned land. That will make it easier for the dog park to be maintained by the public works and parks departments, which already have those properties in their regular line-up of maintenance duties.
A business (yet to be revealed) has offered to donate the fencing for the parameters of the dog park, as well as the piping to enable water spigots at the facility and all the labor.
Drugonis said the dog park will be separated into two areas-one for the bigger dogs and one for smaller ones. Dog park users will gain entry into the facility through double gates, Drugonis said, first allowing Spot to get acclimated with his surroundings, before tearing off into the grass, sans leash, to play.
Drugonis, a fur mom herself of two silver labs, Blue, 8 and Chloe, 6, said the ultimate goal is to establish a nonprofit, 501c3 fund earmarked for the dog park. Donations, she said, will go toward replacing doggy doo doo bags, which will be placed at the park for responsible owners to pick up after their dog’s business, as well as to purchase other fun features, like ramps and related stuff. Money from the nonprofit could also be used to purchase memorial stones to honor the loss of beloved pets, she said.