PARIS — Tuesday marked the end of a long civics lesson for a local group of Brownies.
The town of Paris gathered a local Brownie troop Tuesday to thank them for their work in pushing for a safety fence around the playground in Moore Park. In the front row, from left, are Kailey Cook, Chloe Truman, Hayley Kennagh, Olivia Gallan and Skye-len Landers. In the back row are Brooke Kyllonen, Gina Buchao, Olivia Orlando, Sasha Larson and Chloe Hodgdon. Brownie Megan Mitchell was absent.
Brownies chat during an event in their honor Tuesday at the Paris Town Office. The troop was responsible for getting a safety fence built around the playground in Moore Park. In the front row, from left, are Kailey Cook, Chloe Truman, Hayley Kennagh and Olivia Gannan. In the back row are Brooke Kyllonen, Gina Buchao and Olivia Orlando.
Local Brownies were honored Tuesday for lobbying the town to build a safety fence around the playground in Moore Park. The Brownies were concerned that small children might run into nearby Route 26.
The town thanked a local Brownie troop for their work in lobbying for a fence around the playground in Moore Park, a project that earned the girls their Brownie Quest badges.
“You did a really good thing,” Board of Selectmen Chairman Robert Kirchherr told the 10 Brownies assembled at the Town Office on Tuesday. He told them to remember that they could always petition the government when they see a problem.
Last year, the girls were looking for a project for their Take Action Key, a badge necessary for the Brownie Quest award, according to their troop leader, Bobbi Jo Hodgdon. She said they needed to identify a safety issue in the community.
After pitching some ideas, they decided on the playground in Moore Park, which is close to traffic on Route 26. “It kind of snowballed from there,” Hodgdon said.
Each of the girls wrote a letter to Town Manager Phil Tarr, Hodgdon said. She said Tarr suggested they bring the issue to voters at the annual town meeting. In June, the Brownies attended the town meeting to ask the town to put aside $2,857 for the fence. Hodgdon said Brownie rules prevented them from raising the money themselves.
There was some resistance, but in the end voters approved taking the money from the subdivision/recreation assessment fund, where funds were available, to avoid raising taxes.
Bancroft Contracting installed the black vinyl coated chain link fence in early December, Tarr said. Selectmen discussed other fence options, like white vinyl pickets, but the chain link option was less expensive.
Hodgdon said she didn't know if the girls, who are in third grade, fully understood the effect they'd had with the project, but said they were excited when they saw the fence had been built in December.
“It's been a great civics lesson for them,” Hodgdon said. “I think they should all be really proud of themselves.”
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Park Fence
And it only took 5 months of dubbing around and prodding over and over again to get the Town Manager to complete this job! Kudos to Phil Tarr for seeing this shovel-ready project through completion. Whew!! And we should jump right on the bandwagon this year and entrust him with 4 or 5 million dollars to fix our roads ???
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