Did you know? While the Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection (WEP) does a great job maintaining the area for flood control, most of the money and labor to keep up the trail comes from your neighbors. Sometimes the County and City supply some mulch, but this is not regularly scheduled, budgeted, or a consistent policy or program.

We’ll also be reviewing all the good news from Barry Park. Thanks to the revived Barry Park Association (Friends of Barry Park) and other groups, the City of Syracuse has been investing in Barry Park. There is a new shade structure, Westcott Street sidewalk, mural on the field house, and now funds for a new playground.

A coalition of your neighborhood groups – which collectively meet as the Westcott Leadership Roundtable (WLR) – urge the County to assume this cost. As our only Eastside water feature, we would like see the Detention Basin to be officially recognized as a park as well as part of the Flood Control system. We’d only want to tweak the status quo, but we’d like the de facto park to be recognized and funded as a real one.

This meeting is organized by the member groups of the Westcott Leadership Roundtable, a coalition of Eastside community organizations. Lead sponsors are the Westcott Neighborhood Association (WNA), the Friends of Barry Park, Meadowbrook Gardens, the Southeast University Neighborhood Association (SEUNA) and the University Neighborhood Preservation Association (UNPA).