Carthage receives TML Excellence Award for All-Abilities park

The Panola Watchman
From Staff Reports
October 14, 2022

The City of Carthage received the 2022 Municipal Excellence Awards in the category of Public Works for a city with a population of under 25,000.

The award was announced at an Oct. 5 meeting of the Texas Municipal League State Convention in San Antonio, with a number of Carthage representatives on hand.

Those included Mayor Olin Joffrion, Mayor Pro Tem Jerry Hanszen and his wife Wanda, City Manager Stephen Williams, Commissioners Walta Cooke, Isha Brown and Tate Barber and his wife Kathryn Barber, along with City Secretary Dana Griffin and City Accountant Wendy Hudman.

The winning entry was for College View All Ages All Abilities Park, which represented a collaborative effort between the city and the Panola College Occupational Therapy Assistant program with lots of community support.

Jessica Pace, who city officials said was instrumental in getting the park funded and built, said it was rewarding to see the project come together.

“It is truly amazing to see how this park has accomplished its goal of bringing families and friends of all abilities together,” Pace said. “Even though the park opened at the beginning of winter, there has yet to be a day when the park is not full of families.”

The park opened in December 2021, but efforts were started more than two years prior to that. The project cost a total of $770,000 and began in January 2019.

It was scheduled for completion of fundraising in mid-2020, but the COVID pandemic halted the project which remained stalled until late fall of 2020.

After fundraising efforts were able to resume, the project was successfully funded by early spring of 2021. Construction of the project began that summer and was completed in mid-December of 2021.