Improvement Plan Back On Council Agenda

Zanesville Mayor Howard Zwelling’s Capital Improvement plans for Gant Municipal Stadium, Secrest Auditorium and the Interskate Park are back on the agenda for City Council to discuss.

It was back in March that Council suggested the mayor split up his plan into three separate ordinances to make it easier to vote up or vote down a single issue rather than the entire plan as a whole. “I brought them back in different form then they appeared in the one ordinance, I left quite a few out of the Secrest part that I thought might have been objectionable and left in what I think is absolutely essential and the stadium is a 2 part deal.”

Improvements to the Interskate park should go as planned if the city finds out they were awarded grant money for half of the project in August. $385,000 in improvements to Gant Stadium and $265,000 in updates to Secrest are a different story. Concern over the state of the economy was brought up numerous times from residents in attendance over spending the money on more important things. “We’re talking about whats going to be good for the greater amount of the people of Zanesville. Mr. Zakany brought up a good point, when we have tournaments at Riverside, when we have tournaments at Gant, when we have events at Secrest people come in from out of town, they rent hotel rooms, they dine at restaurants. Its good for the economy, this is a bee-hive of activity in this community and we want to keep it that way.”

It will be another two weeks before the plans are discussed again at the next Council meeting.