An impending face-lift to Dillon Town Park could include the construction of a pavilion, multi-purpose athletic fields or updated playground equipment, according to the most popular wish list ideas voted on by residents.

On Thursday, close to 50 locals attended the first of at least two community open houses at Dillon Town Hall to participate in drafting the town park master plan. The open house was led by consultants from Zehren and Associates, Inc., a design firm with offices in Avon and Santa Barbara, Calif., and Ceres Plus, Inc., which has offices in Silverthorne and Eagle.

Also attending the meeting were Dillon elected officials and members of the local Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee.

The purpose of the two-hour event was four-fold and residents were invited to comment about a variety of park topics, including existing conditions, the appropriateness of some of the proposed improvement projects, wish list projects not yet considered and concerns about some of the existing ideas.

In addition to filling out surveys, residents were given five round stickers and asked to rank some of the proposed projects in order of highest priority. Although the data collected during the open house won’t be available until the next community meeting, tentatively scheduled for July 9, there were four projects that clearly stood out as community favorites.

Among the top votes was the construction of a pavilion, a multi-purpose athletic field or a facility to host a variety of community events, such as yoga, outdoor movies and 5k runs. The purchase of new playground equipment also ranked high among members of the community.

Despite the construction of a pavilion being the overwhelming favorite, Rick Giamanco, a Summit County resident for 20 years and member of the advisory committee, said he’d prefer to see more open space and joked that the park would benefit from fewer buildings in the area.

“I’d like to see more landscaping and grass for picnics and family-friendly events,” Giamanco said. “We have plenty of natural fauna all around us, but what we need is a real park.” In fact, “we should get rid of town hall and the fire department and make that (a) park too.”

Although the town park master plan gained traction recently, this is not the first time Dillon residents have discussed much-needed upgrades, said Dillon town manager Joe Wray. Park improvements have been a topic of conversation on at least one occasion during the last several years, but the project was tabled to address more pressing town issues.

The project again picked up speed in May when Dillon Town Council approved hiring Ceres Plus, Inc. to serve as a consultant for the project. The council approved a fee of $30,000 for their participation.

Dillon Town Park is located near Dillon Town Hall along the north side of Buffalo Street, between Lake Dillon Drive and LaBonte Street. The park features four public tennis courts, a playground, bocce ball courts, a baseball field, a picnic shelter with grills, restrooms, a volleyball court and walking trails.

I’d like to see more landscaping and grass for picnics and family-friendly events,

Bisbee High School is buzzing with activity as a seven-member team from AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps has agreed to devote eight weeks to sprucing up the school.

A paint job, grounds work, laying out a commu-nity garden and other landscaping is a long-term vision for Principal Lisa Holland.

Thanks to Darcy Tessman, with the Arizona 4-H Club youth development office in Cochise County, she now has a team ready and willing to do the work.

“We establish projects for them to work on, whether it be to work on the garden projects or to help clean and paint the campus,” Holland said. “They will also be helping us put in a new lab as part of the Joint Technical Education District program.”

Team members have moved the roses to a different location, set up a vegetable garden, painted breezeway poles and will paint certain classrooms, she said.

The school’s Alumni Association has also come into the picture by donating funds for new trophy cases.

Tessman will train the volunteers to refurbish bicycles and create picnic tables from pallets in an effort to introduce ideas for recycling.

Once team members have the know-how, they’ll be able to teach the students, noted team leader Lindsey Pettit.

“Tessman is coming up with a lot of new and innovative ways to keep the kids in positive and productive activities after school,” Pettit said.

“And it helps create that spark of entrepreneurship and to take pride in their craft,” noted Jacob Atkins, from Brunswick, Maine. He took a year off from school to be a part of AmeriCorps.

One of the best things about being in the corps is that the students come from across the country and have varying interests in career choices. However, according to Atkins and Pettit, who is from Satellite Beach, Fla., what they learn working in various communities is not only worthwhile education-wise, but personally. They get to make a difference in the lives of complete strangers.

Pettit was pleased to bring a new face to the old school and said she hoped the students would enjoy the new gardens and fresh paint.

Atkins, who acts as the media specialist, always wanted to come west and jumped at the chance to see Southeastern Arizona and encounter some of the cross-culture in the border area of the “wild, wild West.”

“It’s my call of duty. I wanted to serve the communities in my own country and put my hands in different service projects,” he said. “AmeriCorps is an appetizer of many types of service programs. So it helped me solidify my own interests, which will probably fall under social work.’

Anyone 18 to 24 years old can enter Americorps, said Pettit, a college graduate. It doesn’t matter if one has no college, some college or a degree. Two of her team-mates came right out of high school.

Atkins learned about AmeriCorps while in high school, so it was something he kept in the back of his mind when he went to college.

Holland, the principal, said the school has been “working … on grants to help us with our initial idea of a sustainable garden. This is a pretty big project, and it will take a number of years to come to fruition,” she said.

“We received $4,500 from the Cochise County Foundation and then another $12,000 from the Arizona Forestry Service.

“The forestry grant will be used to create more of a mesquite-type orchard to prevent soil erosion, provide a habitat for animals that can then be identified and studied and for our student population to enjoy the campus a little bit more.”

The way Holland sees it, the new gardens – one for vegetables, one for pollination (flowers) and the mini-forest – will provide the students with valuable experience in science, math, construction, marketing and sales, and could point to careers not considered before.

It also includes partnering with University of Arizona students who can show Bisbee students how research is done.

“When we get the mesquite forest going, we’ll be gathering the bean pods and making mesquite flour, and we can also market the mesquite wood,” Holland added. “But right now we’re just in the starting phase.

“It also makes the school more visibly appealing for our students and our stakeholders,” said Holland, who noted how much wear and tear a school takes over the years.

Holland’s efforts and those of many others will perhaps make a student take a look around at the difference a group of strangers made and, literally, stop and smell the roses.