Residents of Mexico can expect a piece of mail from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department soon.

Department Director Chad Shoemaker told Park Board members at their regular meeting on Monday, Nov. 6, that a survey is ready and should be arriving in residents’ mailboxes in the next week or two.

One of the main questions on the survey will be about Tyronn Lue Park and where an entrance for a parking lot should be located. The department originally came up with a plan to locate the entrance coming in off of Green Boulevard but the project was slowed when some wanted to consider a different location off of Tyronn Lue Boulevard. There is a considerable cost difference between the two plans.

Some board members have done surveys of their own and have found that folks who live near the park prefer the Tyronn Lue location while folks who live in other parts of town prefer the Green Boulevard option. Shoemaker said this survey’s sophistication will be able to answer that question more directly.

“We can use the neighborhood zone to geo-locate questions on that particular question,” Shoemaker said. “You guys will be able to see what people in that little neighborhood think and what the other geographic areas think.”

Shoemaker said residents will be given about 30 to 60 days to respond and then it will take up to an additional 60 days for the company handling the survey to prepare a report. Shoemaker estimated he could have some data by February.

“Which is fine because we’re not doing construction or anything else in the middle of winter,” Shoemaker followed with. “It gives us enough time to have a placeholder bid (specifications) ready in either direction.”

Tyronn Lue Park has been on the Park Board’s agenda for the past couple of months and it’s even reached the City Council’s radar. Recognizing the survey will be an important piece to any decision the board decided to table the issue until next Spring.

Another component of the survey will be some general questions any department would ask in the realm of “How are we doing?” Shoemaker said if everything goes well his department will have two open positions filled by the end of this week which will help in that area. Shoemaker gave a recent example where every staff person had to work a little extra one day to get all of the bathrooms winterized before the first freeze hit.

“It’d be nice to have two more people in-house so we don’t have to ask people to go above and beyond just to get our regular work done,” Shoemaker said.