Following a presentation that several joked resembled an episode of the show Shark Tank, Forsyth County’s parks board approved new fencing that makes it easier for parents to take pictures of baseball games.
Following a presentation from local company DiamondView Products, the board voted 4-0, with member Joe Brown absent, to move forward with the proposal to add sections of fencing to six fields at Central Park.
“We’re mostly just interested to see how it works with the fence, where they’re located, if parents are crawling over each other to use it and what the demand is,” Parks Director Jim Pryor said.
The section of fencing will have a metal frame that will allow for pictures without the chain link fence and is smaller than the diameter of a baseball.
“We’ll place the DiamondView on the field such that it’s not behind the backstop,” CEO Rick Wallace said. “We proposed to put two frames at each [field] going up the foul fences.”
The frame also has space for advertising that will be shared with the parks department.
Installation and maintenance will be done by the company free of charge.
Board members also voted during the meeting to change fees at Shady Grove Campground.
In February, the board directed Matt Pate, natural resources manager for the county, to look at numbers over the summer to determine if a fee change was needed.
“What we want to do is align ourselves more with the Army Corps of Engineers’ fee schedule, which increased this past year,” Pate said.
Prices will go up for 30-amp electric sites from $26 to $28 and 50-amp electric sites from $28 to $30.
Group campsites will also see an increase. The fee for site 107, which is eight sites, will go from $155 to $200, and site 106, which is six sites, will go from $135 to $175.
The campground also saw more out of towners than in last year
“[In] 2015, 12 percent of people that came were out of town residents,” Pate said. “That jumped 300 percent to 35 percent in 2016.”
Online reservations also went to 55 percent in the first year they were available.
Final decisions on both items will be made by the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners at a future meeting.