City Staff Work on Aging Mackle Park Water Feature

No one wants to see the popular spray park at Mackle Park firing on all cylinders more than Martha Montgomery, the city’s facilities supervisor.

Montgomery has been fielding a lot of phone calls from Marco Island citizens lately concerning the water feature that has been down for repairs as summer temperatures rise. The large volume of calls are not going unheeded.

“They have a lot of impact,” Martha Montgomery said Thursday afternoon as she stood inside the partially functioning water feature at Mackle Park. “We’ve had a lot of phone calls.”

Montgomery understands. She feels the callers’ pain. She’s happy that they’re happy again.

"I mean besides the beach,” Montgomery reasons, "if you want to cool off, this is where they want to go. The parents are very happy that we’ve at least got it operating at this level." 

Montgomery said city fleet and facilities staffers Hector Bobe and Steve Powlowski were instrumental in getting the spray park functioning at a level where the kids can enjoy themselves.

Of course, a partially functioning spray park is not the final objective. But a fully functioning spray park is going to take some time. 

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Montgomery said. "I’d say as far as changing out the heads completely, we’re probably about a third of the way there. When we fix the worst ones, they all get a little bit better. This is one of the old ones, right here. This is one of the new ones. When we switched out the worst ones with new ones, it increased the pressure.”

"We still have issues,” continued Montgomery. “We still have the computer screen that needs to be replaced. We still need it to cycle through the different features. Right now, it doesn’t move around to different zones.”

Now that they’re on the right path, Montgomery plans to move forward with more improvements to the system.

"Now that I know that this works,” she said, "I’m getting more parts.”

Two years ago, the spray park had underground issues.

"The computer and valves are over there,” Montgomery said, pointing to her left, "and everything runs underground and comes up over there,” she motions right. “We could have a problem somewhere underground and we’ll have to dig.”

She said the spray park is showing the effects of a decade and a half of service.

"It is 15 years old,” Montgomery said matter of factly. "If we replace the valves and the pumps and the computer, possibly the surface, which will help.”

Montgomery surveys the spray park and feels good with the improvements so far.

"This is good,” she says as she’s sprayed with water. "The pressure is where we want it to be. As much as the parents wanted the spray park on, I wanted it back on. The parents are happy. I’m happy. There’s something for the little kids to do here. There’s something for the older kids to do over there.”

Montgomery said the city is looking down the road concerning the spray park.

“They’re going to request a capital budget to work on this,” Montgomery said. “That’s in the process."