After multiple discussions about a proposed Leadership Jackson County project, the Seymour Parks and Recreation Department board finally took action to bring it to reality.

Following 20 minutes of discussion, board member Art Juergens made a motion for parks officials to work with the team to get signage placed in four downtown areas managed by the department. Kendra Zumhingst seconded, and it passed 3-0. Tim Ferret and Bethany Rust were absent.

“I think your group needs to get together and get it planned and get it done because we’ve talked about this three or four times, and you know where to put the signs,” Juergens told Parks Director Stacy Findley. “I’d like to see it get finished.”

For future requests for signage in parks, Findley said she would reach out to fellow parks departments in the state and country to see what their policies are.

“I guarantee that other municipalities will have policies and procedures about this,” she said.

Local optometrist Dr. Nate Otte incorporated some paintings as artwork for a book he has written about dogs walking around downtown Seymour.

He now hopes to get the book, “Downtown Rescue,” published and has partnered with the LJC youth project team in hopes of getting signage placed in five locations to coincide with the story. The idea is to have families walk from place to place while reading the book as a downtown scavenger hunt.

During the Feb. 13 meeting of the parks board, LJC youth project team member Karen Dringenburg asked for permission to place concrete pads and signage in four downtown parks — Steinker Platz, Burkhart Plaza, Crossroads Community Park and the area near the John Mellencamp mural.

The fifth location is outside the Jackson County Public Library, and the project team already received approval to place a concrete pad and sign there.

Dringenburg said the idea is to have a dog paw imprinted in 12-by-12-inch concrete pads and have those near the signs at the five locations. Each sign would include health information. Walking around downtown would promote reading and health benefits.

The books and signs would be available in both English and Spanish, and the books would be available at the library and Jackson County Visitor Center in Seymour.

After nearly 20 minutes of discussion, the board decided to table the topic until more details were available, including a rendering of the sign, what the sign would be made of, how big it would be and how the parks department would be involved.

For the March 13 meeting, the board was forwarded an email from project team member Melanie Burgess with proposals for the signs from Seymour High School’s Owl Manufacturing. That included a rendering and the dimensions, 7.5 inches high and 8 inches wide.

After more discussion, a decision was made to have board members share their questions with Findley and Program Director Chad Keithley so they could meet with the LJC project team to get them answered.

The final 20-minute discussion came during the June 12 meeting, resulting in the project finally moving forward.

During that meeting, Dringenburg was accompanied by Seymour Main Street Executive Director Bri Roll, who had met at the organization’s kiosk near the Mellencamp mural to see if the project team’s signage could be placed on it.

Roll, however, said the kiosk wasn’t developed for this use.

“It doesn’t look centered. It looks like it’s not meant to be there,” she said. “The committee does not want to drill holes into it for rusting and longevity, so we talked about magnetizing the sign on there, but the amount of available metal to magnetize to, you’re going to run the risk of somebody knocking it off or hopefully, nothing worse.”

She said Main Street was willing to see how magnetizing would go, but it’s not going to look very visually appealing and it’s not going to be completely secure.

“So we just talked about coming back and seeing if there were other alternatives that might make sense,” Roll said to the parks board.

Dringenburg again discussed the current signage near the Mellencamp mural.

Along with the Main Street kiosk, there are two QR codes placed by the parks department for people to access an online guestbook and share where they are from, and another is a sign with a QR code placed last year by an LJC project team linking to a visitor center website with information about things to do in the county.

Dringenburg suggested putting the signage and paw print in a flowerbed near the edge of the sidewalk. There is an area that’s just mulch that she said would be good because people wouldn’t be damaging flowers.

Board President Monica Riley said this seems like something for Findley and her staff to decide, and Zumhingst said while the idea is good, she’s concerned about future sign requests.

“How do we get to the point where we’re open-minded or close-minded enough to say that we aren’t just putting anybody who comes before us a sign out on the fence? That’s my concern,” Zumhingst said. “I understand this is Leadership Jackson County, but what happens when all of the other nonprofits want to come in and put their information or put something in? What is the intake process and what are the requirements?”

Findley agreed.

“As far as continuity, we want to make sure at the Mellencamp mural that people sign the guestbook, that they are able to see the Main Street kiosk,” she said. “At some point, it becomes a saturated market where it’s like ‘How do you differentiate?’ … I think at the end of the day, we don’t want there to be too much.”

She said the parks department has been very intentional about its branding and what it’s trying to accomplish.

“I think first and foremost, it’s parks and recreation. These are our facilities to make sure that you have access to what we’re trying to bring to the table first and foremost,” she said. “… I think at some point, we’re going to maybe have to even take a look at putting in some type of policy or an ordinance or something (regarding signage).”

Findley also said with future LJC projects for the parks, it’s important to have conversations on the front end.

“Not every project is going to be able to fit into every park,” she said.

Zumhingst then asked Dringenburg her thoughts on where to put the signage and paw print near the Mellencamp mural plaza. Dringenburg said they are open to whatever works best just so it’s near the plaza because that’s already incorporated into the book.

“I think that’s what has been hard with us is it’s like we’re just getting thrown back and forth between all of these different people,” Dringenburg said. “In our end, it’s just like what’s the goal of LJC? To develop leaders that want to accomplish positive things within your community, and that’s what we’re trying to do here, and we have gotten so much pushback that it has just been very hard to continue to stay positive to want to get this done.”

She said the idea of the book came from the Mice on Main scavenger Hunt in Greenville, South Carolina, that has brought many people to that city’s downtown.

“We’re happy to work with you. We would like somebody to help us get there,” she said.