City commissioners discuss goals for the upcoming fiscal year

BOWLING GREEN Ky.-Every year, the Bowling Green City Commission meets for lunch to discuss hopes and plans for the upcoming fiscal year.

On Monday, that retreat was held at the Sloan Convention Center.

Mayor Bruce Wilkerson said these meetings give officials the chance to informally talk about different topics impacting the city and its residents.

“This is a less formal opportunity for us to relax and have discussions. We have to limit those discussions to what we’ve put into our agenda, but what we’ll do is informally talk about what direction the city would like to go,” Wilkerson said.

Another goal of having everyone together is to discuss the feasibility of the topics.

“I’m a numbers guy, so watching the finances is first on my list,” Wilkerson said.

Some topics included the construction of greenways and parks projects, two things that Commissioner Dana Beasley-Brown is passionate about.

“Just like we have our sidewalk program where we put in money every year to make sure that we’re building new sidewalks and maintaining the ones that we have, we have a proposal to do the same sort of things with our greenways,” Beasley-Brown said.

Beasley-Brown said the addition of more safe spaces for kids to enjoy the outdoors will come in handy.

“I’m just excited to hear about what updates we might have in terms of new places that we can put parks where right now kids are playing in the streets, and don’t have a safe place to play,” Beasley-Brown said.

When it comes to the kids, Beasley-Brown said it would also be beneficial to provide more community centers for after school activities.

“I’m looking forward to opening up more community centers that would also expand affordable child care for families working in the summers,” Beasley-Brown said.