*Editor’s Note: See separate story on the lawsuit.
Following a 49-minute closed session during a special meeting last week, Macomb Park District commissioners voted to direct legal counsel to file a lawsuit and collect expenses and damages for removal of a waterslide from a portion of Derry Park.
Mark Seipel, who built the waterslide 36 years ago, had asked the Macomb Park Board in June to provide an easement for the portion of the slide that is on park property. He said he had a verbal agreement with then-park director Ray Peterson to allow a portion of the slide in Derry Park. The board notified Seipel last month that there would be no easement and that he must remove the portion of the slide that is on district property. At the board's July 21 meeting, city resident Anne Burton said she agrees with the district's position. 'It is a public nuisance,' she said of the waterslide.
In other July business, Sikich of Springfield delivered a copy of the 2025 district external audit. The report indicates the district earned an additional $63,000 for the year in its recreation fund, but that it lost $22,424 due to renovation costs at Patton Park. Assistant Treasurer Cory Clem reported that the district's consolidated development fund ended June with $427,207. He said the general fund totaled $258,185. Clem said the park district received no tax distribution funding in June.
Park Director Blake Severs provided a clarification regarding the nature center. 'The building has been renamed the Ray Peterson Nature Center,' he said of the memorial tribute to the late park director. 'But the surrounding land will still be referred to as the Lakeview Nature Area.'
