Dan Eidson, a former Cuba Parks and Recreation Board member, asked the Cuba Board of Aldermen and the mayor several questions on Feb. 3 about agenda items during the five minutes allotted during citizen participation, including how they planned to pay for sealing the bike trail at Patti Jo’s Playground.

“The park board budgeted that,” said Cuba Mayor Kevin Copling.

City Clerk Lainie Garbo said that $10,000 had been budgeted for Mapleshade Park, intended to be used for the trail and benches.

“It’s one of the brand new parks. I don’t understand why it needs to be resealed, but, nonetheless, there’s other things that could be done,” Eidson said. “I’m going to move on.”

He then questioned why the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) office was being moved across town. The mayor let the EOC director, Greg Hubbell, answer.

“The reason why they want to move it is the fact that they’re making that the Route 66 Museum,” Hubbell said.

Ryan Meiser, tourism committee member, explained that the tourism committee is taking it over and turning it into a Route 66 Tourism Center, unlike the one located along Interstate 44, which is city of Cuba-oriented.

“We have a Welcome Center that should be promoting the tourism in this town. Yes? No?” Eidson asked.

Meiser responded that “it really doesn’t.”

While the current tourism center brings in visitors along Interstate 44, adding a new one that is Route 66-centered will encourage tourism from Mother Road enthusiasts.

Cyndi Mercer, another former Parks and Recs board member, also addressed resealing the bike trail at Patti Jo’s Playground.

“We were told numerous times by Jennifer (Basham, city of Cuba staff accountant/bookkeeper) that things have to be specifically outlined. You can’t just take the total budget for a park and apply it to whatever was needed,” Mercer said.

She shared that the trail was never budgeted to be resealed and that the money could be reallocated to improve or expand the basketball courts, which, she explained, is a high priority for the community.

In response, the mayor said that they hadn’t budgeted to repair or expand the courts, but the old Parks and Recs board did budget $30,000 for pickleball courts. However, the bid was $200,000 for the courts. He then alleged that former Parks and Recs board members said the pickleball courts were going to happen, but without the money to back it up, misled the citizens.

“So Lainie and I put together a 503c to try to collect money for donations...and we worked hard, and we got $150,000 to do these pickleball courts,” Copling said.

Mercer responded that Copling was the one being misleading.

“If you want to talk about misleading, I guess you forgot about numerous conversations that we had, which I could prove,” Mercer said. “You called me numerous times and you said you had a private donor and that you had it under wrap.”

Mercer claimed that when she was on the board, they never wanted to push the pickleball courts. Referencing a Facebook post that the board made where they had asked the community where they wanted the pickleball courts, and what else they wanted to see. The overwhelming response was for basketball courts.

“You said that it was going to be the straight thing and you had a donor and all that,” Mercer said.

Copling claimed that he got the donor for the courts later on.

Rena Martin, former Parks and Recs Board member, addressed a short statement to the mayor.

“What Cyndi (Mercer) was talking about the day that we did the budget, you spoke to me out in that hallway and told me you had a donor to cover the rest of the pickleball courts,” Martin said.

Copling clarified that after the city put in a large piece of playground equipment, the plan was to go around it.

“And that is why we actually got a donation for the pickleball court. That’s how we got talking. They said ‘we would have paid half that, maybe, Kevin, but we can do something else,’” Copling said.

“And that was before the budget,” said Alderman Ward 3 Jeff Bouse.

During the line item discussion regarding Patti Jo’s Playground, the board approved $2,575 for resealing the bike trail with a 5-0 vote.