ANNAHEIM — The people of Annaheim have fundraised more than half of the $123,000 needed to replace the town’s only playground.
Nearly $80,000 has been raised since October 2017, said Charlene Choboter, the Annaheim playground committee’s treasurer.
“The existing structure at the school is all wooden and it's well over 20 years old. The wood is starting to rot and showing its age,” she said. “There was stuff to climb on, but the rope is deteriorating and we actually had to take some of it down because the wires were starting to break and poke through.”
Although the playground still meets the school division’s safety criteria, “if we hadn't started fundraising, I don't think it would have been to many more years before [the playground] would have had to be taken down,” Choboter said.
The $123,000 sum will cover the cost of the structure, re-landscaping the sand around the playground, and hiring a professional supervisor to oversee it’s installation.
“The rest would be volunteers that we would have to get together to put the playground up,” Choboter said.
While the final playground design is still undecided, Choboter said it will feature “a lot of the new elements that you see at parks.” New swing sets, slides and monkey bars are a given, she said, and teeter-totters if space allows it.
The committee had recently sold 287 lottery tickets at $100 each, for the chance to win either $9,000 cash or a Westeel fertilizer bin of twice the value. They will be staffing an all-day barbecue concession during a local auction sale on June 27.
