City takes first steps to rehab outdoor courts

The City of Sundance hopes to upgrade its outdoor rec area, starting with an overhaul for the basketball courts. Ultimately, the council hopes to secure funding to update its courts for three different sports, also including pickleball and tennis.

The basketball court will come first, explained Public Works Director Mac Erickson last week, due to a request from Crook County School District.

“The school has approached me on upgrading and rehabbing the outdoor basketball court to allow the elementary kids to use it during recess,” Erickson told the council.

“The [parent involvement] committee has bought two new adjustable hoops to put in there and then my plan was to overlay and resurface that court to hopefully save its life and then put chain link fence around it. The school is going to partner up with us to help pay for the fencing and buy the hoops and then we’ll have an updated, upgraded court for the elementary school and the public to use.”

With several local pickleball enthusiasts in the audience of the council’s regular meeting, Erickson also spoke to the city’s plans to address their needs. It’s popularity continues to increase: at this time, an estimated 16 to 18 people play pickleball three times each week.

Before taking any other steps, Erickson explained, the city needs to find out exactly how much it will cost to fix up a pickleball area next to the skate park.

“I think the first step is to probably get an engineer’s design estimate on what it is going to cost to rebuild that facility,” Erickson said.

“I don’t know if it’s going to take $100,000 or $600,000. Whatever it might be, I think the original start is to have someone look at it so that, if we go after money for it, we know how much to go after.”

Mayor Paul Brooks suggested that now would be a good time for this because the state is in the second year of its budget, which is historically the time when consensus money comes available.

“They always underestimate revenues, so when the revenues come in on that second year they are usually above and the legislature has been pretty good about doling that out as what they call consensus money: basically, projects that your communities – in this case the county commissioners and the four towns – agree on,” Brooks said.

Consensus funds are appropriated by the Legislature and allocated at the county level, where they are distributed to the municipalities according to need.