By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter

jevans@thepccourier.com

EASLEY — The city of Easley will be updating its Parks and Recreation Master Plan.

Last week, Easley City Council voted unanimously to award a contract to Alta Planning and Design for professional services related to updating the master plan.

Just how much the contract will be for is not known yet, city administrator Stephen Steese told council.

Professional services providers such as Alta Planning cannot, by law, “provide a definitive price quote,” he said.

“With professional services, we have to go based on qualifications,” Steese said. “They gave us an estimated cost based on similar projects, and it was around $60,000.

“What we will do now is we will go back and negotiate and get a contract together and that contract will outline the estimated cost of the project. We’ve outlined what we want them to do, and they estimated based on that. Because it’s based on hourly rates, they can’t give us a definitive number of hours. The actual hours may be less.”

That contract is “not to exceed” Alta’s estimated cost, Steese said.

The range of price differences in the proposals the city received was between $6,000 and $8,000, Steese said.

Councilman Brian Garrison said the recreation committee recommended going with Alta Planning because the city had worked closely with the firm on previous projects.

Councilman Chris Mann said Alta brings a “broad range of experience” to the table regarding master plans.

The master plan updating process would take about eight to nine months, Steese said. The process could begin in May.

“We’ll probably be finishing this up about the first of next year,” he said.

Next year’s budget process could include items created in the master plan update.

Councilman Kent Dykes said the public would have a chance to weigh in on the plan.

Steese said the first Parks and Recreation Master Plan was created in 2008 and has not been updated since then.

“We’ve seen a shift in growth of different sports, demand for different sports,” Steese said. “Back then, baseball was our big thing. Now we’re kind of built out for baseball and have more demand for soccer, senior sports, stuff like that.”