Donation provides more cameras at city parks

By Randy Bell

Towne Spring Park, a pocket park located in Olde Towne Clinton, will soon have security cameras installed, and additional cameras will be placed at the pickleball courts and parking areas at Towne Park on Old Vicksburg Road.

Using money from an anonymous donor, the City is buying cameras for Clinton’s new pickleball courts and replacing the cameras at the nearby Kid’s Towne playground. The Board of Aldermen on June 2 approved the $8,950 contract with Pennington and Trim Alarm Services to install those cameras at Towne Park.

“This is preventive,” says Parks and Recreation Director Courtney Nunn, who points out that there were already several cameras at Kid’s Towne. “This will give us more cameras to be able to oversee the pickleball courts, as well as the surrounding areas.”

Nunn says, in addition to the courts, the cameras will cover the parking area pickleball players use.

A separate contract with the same company will put cameras in the last city park without them. Pennington and Trim is being paid $4,500 for the project at Town Spring Park in Olde Towne. Nunn describes it as a “pocket park.”

She says, “There’s a cool spring there, and there are activities there that we need cameras on.”

Although the City cautions the public not to drink from the spring, the park provides a quiet spot to learn some of Clinton’s history. According to the City’s website, “Town Spring Park restores one of the original springs that helped Clinton become a desired resting place for weary travelers in the 1800s and provided water to early residents of the city. Two roads ran near the location of this spring, the Natchez Trace and the Jackson/Vicksburg Road. For centuries, the spring located at this site supplied water to Native Americans and overland travelers from the North and East, as well as the flatboatmen returning from New Orleans to their frontier homes. Town Spring now serves as a quaint reminder of the early years of Clinton’s growth.”