The Waterloo Park District Board met briefly last Wednesday to note work done at Lions Park and discuss other park matters as the summer season winds down, also offering information on the abrupt closure of the Waterloo Community Splash Pad last month.

As park board president Mary Gardner noted, she authorized the closure of the splash pad for the season on Aug. 29.

Park district superintendent Don Prater explained the facility had closed for the season to allow for repair and maintenance on some of the water-spraying features.

The board previously discussed that some of the corn stalks installed for the splash pad’s opening last year had started to crack, with similar damage showing on the slide part of the central barn feature installed earlier this season.

At the end of the meeting, Prater said this damage developed due to the construction process of the features which can often leave behind pockets of air that, in turn, cause cracking in the material.

“That stuff is all liquid fiberglass poured over a mold, and they said sometimes it happens that when they pour it over the mold, it gets little air bubbles in it, and those air bubbles crack, and then they’ll pop up,” Prater said. “It’s really impossible to avoid it all the time. It is a little unusual that we had that many on the slide, but it was such a big area.”

Prater said representatives of Rain Drop Products stopped by the day before the board’s meeting, replacing the cornstalks and filling in the cracks on the slide.

Some of the slide’s cracks were previously filled in by the park district under advisement from Rain Drop.

“They brought two brand new ones and then took the old ones back,” Prater said. “But where they repaired the slide and that, they found a couple other little bubbles, and he drilled them out and sealed them. Said the patches that we put in there were fine, so you can’t even tell it now. They sanded them the rest of the way down.”

Prater also said Rain Drop had installed a new landing pad or mat for the slide that should better stay in place and handle the facility’s chemicals, and he additionally noted filter problems at the splash pad that would be handled going forward.

Also at the end of the meeting, Park District Attorney Paul Schimpf noted that most of the items the district has purchased from Rain Drop have a lifetime warranty.

Another small splash pad matter, Prater said HMG Engineers had requested an opportunity to shoot a sort of promotional video at the splash pad to demonstrate the work that had been done, and he had obliged.

In the rest of his superintendent’s report, Prater spoke about an issue he encountered with a broken gearshift in a park district vehicle, the installation of 40 pavers for the Daughters of the American Revolution and his communication with M&E Plastic Repair to see about fixing the spiral slide at William Zimmer Memorial Park.

Regarding that slide, Prater said a replacement would likely cost around $30,000, with a repair quote from M&E for plastic welding amounting to about $1,000.

He also noted the substantial work done at Lions Park, with only a railing left to be installed.

While this work seems to have been done rather quickly, the board previously discussed the project – undertaken by the Waterloo Lions Club – for some time, with a staircase and small road leading to handicap parking for the pavilion both constituting much-needed accessibility features.

It was noted the board would be donating $15,000 to the Lions Club to help pay for the project.

In speaking about activity at other parks, Prater said he’d been notified about graffiti at the skate park, with profanities having been painted onto the concrete.

Elsewhere in the meeting, the board noted the response from the community on Facebook as they’ve started advertising seasonal employment openings in the park district.

Additionally, Schimpf said the park district office – located at 318 N. Library Street – would be open through the week of Sept. 22 to allow the public time to inspect the annual audit.