Business View Magazine | November 2019

329 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2019 with your Parks and Rec?’ Well, we’re doing that now and it will be a huge impact down the road. We’re basically 40 years and $80 million behind in our Parks and Recreation. But we’re going to have all our projects completed in four years for half that amount of money. I think it’s great for the welfare of the community – for our kids and our senior citizens to have places to get outside and be active. It’s essential to put money into this. It brings the community together and it also allows our recreation programs to expand.” These upcoming projects include a $16-18 million recreation facility to be constructed on the north side of town. The new facility will have an indoor gymnasium, baseball and softball fields, walking trails, and other passive park features. “We also have a field on the south side of town that was one big soccer field with a baseball field attached,” Toms adds. “We tore it completely down and rebuilt it to four football fields, one with a rubberized track around it, and three of those fields are lit. We have a possibility of a festival environment in that particular park and I think the economic impact is going to be long- term. That facility could draw soccer attention, football attention, and lacrosse attention. The gymnasiums we’re building are going to see basketball activity, as well as volleyball activity. So, we’re bringing the opportunity for a lot of economic impact through travel teams in just about every area of athletics you can imagine.” “With the new complex, it gives us the opportunity to have events we’ve never had – gymnastics, roller derby – we get to think outside the box and bring new ideas in,” adds Reneau. “And, at the end of the day, it brings tax dollars back into the city.” Toms says that the new projects will be funded by a combination of a bond issue and the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) monies coming into the city. “It’s a one-percent sales tax that was voted on that lasts for six years,” he notes. “And since 2000, we’ve had a continuing tax here in Houston County and we’ve kept those SPLOST dollars coming in.” Toms notes that Warner Robins is also interested WARNER ROB INS , GEORGI A