Matt,
After looking over the West Park Plan, I hope the City Engineering Dept has this figured out right. During Dec'08 - Jan'09 the entire North & East side of West Park was under water up to the baseball diamonds,and the park was being pumped out at the Southeast end. It is not unusual to have the Northeast side of the park under 6-8 inches of water. The largest proposed detention pond is directly adjacent to the entire West end of my back yard. If this plan doesn't work properly,the result will be devastating for the homes on the East and Southeast side of West Park. When City Engineering rebuilt Orchard Ct around 2002, they left us with a tighter curve at the Northwest corner(we were told it was going to be made wider);City snow plows & the refuse trucks have a hard time negotiating the Northwest corner of the court;there is now poorer drainage at the Northwest corner as there is always standing water on the street after rain/melting snow;the entire North side of the court is usually under water,sometimes over the barrier curb, after a hard rain;the blacktop to the court is already deteriorating; the Northwest corner blacktop has already been patched at least twice. I sure hope they got the West Park Plan right.
Regards,
Joey Piscitello

Flooding without a doubt is a problem in town, but my guess is that the majority of people including our City leaders do not know the history of several of our fine parks like West Park. We have had family here for almost 90 years, when West Park was farm land it was not farmed because it was a low area that the farmers let flood, like a good portion of Prairie Lakes, Fire Station 1, behind Juno Lighting, the entire area around the Allstate Arena, the list goes on and on.