By JOSH COTTON

jcotton@timesobserver.com

With challenges to find volunteers, the City of Warren merged the Parks & Recreation Commission with the Street Landscape Committee.

The first meeting of the combined entity — the Parks, Recreation and Landscape Commission — was held Tuesday morning. The board hit on a wide range of issues.

The most relevant to the merger was discussion on merging the two groups’ founding documents.

City Manager Mike Holtz said those documents include “broad statements” about the role of each entity.

Members were asked to review the documents in advance of the Feb. meeting.

BETTS PARK

Department of Public Works Superintendent Joe Reinke said that “every inch of waterline” in Betts Park is currently being replaced.

“The hardest part of the project was getting to two-inch water line under Route 6,” he explained, telling the commission that they dug up the current — and aged — six-inch cast line and ran the new line through it.

URBAN FOREST

Reinke, who is also the city’s arborist, provided an update on trees in the city’s right of ways.

He said the number of Norway Maple continues to decline. When he took over there were 530, there are now 406. Many were planted between 1920 and 1960.

“We’re starting to see a lot of those trees fail now,” he said.

A similar decline has been observed with flowering pear trees.

“Recently, Pennsylvania has told us they are a nuisance, in invasive species,” Reinke said, and “told all communities not to plant them anymore.”

Kirk Johnson, a former member of the Parks and Recreation Commission, raised concern about graffiti on oak trees at the picnic area at Washington Park.

Reinke said he plans to take a bark knife there and “slowly peel that away when it warms up again.”

BEATY PAVILION

Holtz told the commission that the city has included funds in the budget for a pavilion closer to the playground at Beaty Park.

“The goal is to get that build before the June play season.,” he said. “It’s been needed.”

As far as other projects in the park, Reinke said that there may be some equipment upgrades to the playground across from the CAR Pool.

“(I’m) not quite sure what that’s going to be yet,” he said. “(We’re) working on that.”

Holtz also said a local group is fundraising to install eight pickleball courts at Betts Park adjacent to the bocce courts. The goal, he said, is to break ground this spring.