CRAWFORD COUNTY—Crawford Park District Director Josh Dyer has devoted his life to building the park district, and it shows.

The upcoming renewal levy on the May 3rd ballot doesn’t increase taxes but simply renews the levy originally passed in 2012.

Over the last ten years, the district has used levy money in a variety of ways, including capital improvement projects.

“We were in need of some storage space, so we were able to construct two storage buildings, one here at Lowe-Volk and one at Unger Park,”

Dyer said. “We’ve also been able to increase staff. We were able to add a full-time and a part-time naturalist and also a full-time and a part-time maintenance help that we never had before.”

The district had been so focused on its education mission its maintenance work had been falling behind, he said.

“So those were some of the bigger things; we just needed to increase staff a little bit to get the job done,” he said.

At one time, the park district had received local government funds from the state, but legislators “just slashed the snot out of ’em” in an effort to balance the state budget—which led to the original levy request in 2012, Dyer said.

Not to be confused with the black and white signs around Bucyrus declaring no new taxes and no more parks, Dyer wants the community to understand that the Crawford Park District is an entirely separate entity from any present or future park aspirations.

The levy, which costs the average homeowner $12.60 per year to support, brings a lot of bang for the few bucks it costs.

Through careful planning and thoughtful spending, the park district boasts 20,000 visitors per year, that’s nearly half of the population of the entire county (41,494).

In twelve years, only one additional park has been added to the district.

Through the generous support of private donors, no child is ever turned away from their popular summer camp programs for lack of the ability to pay the tuition fee. Educating students is a personal passion of the entire staff, and that shows too:

“We’re in every public school in the county and some of the private ones. Providing that awareness of the environment is a good goal. … Getting our young population aware of the natural environment is paramount to them getting that appreciation and potentially action later on in life to help. The environment is something we have to take care of, and here at the park district, we pride ourselves in contributing to that educational message that our natural resources, we need to protect them and care for them.”
Schools continually ask the district back to present programming to their students.

“We’ve got six parks with trails in them scattered throughout the county; there are three parks on one side of Bucyrus, there are three on this side of Bucyrus. We’ve got a property that we allow hunting on,” Dyer said (referring to the Sandusky Wildlife Area, between Unger Park and Sears Woods at 2035 River Road.) “So not only just for hiking and bird-watching and other natural observation, but we also do have places that people can hunt. Public hunting in central Ohio is few and far between, and so having that opportunity, I know guys really enjoy that.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, park attendance soared.

“It was more than obvious that people love to have the parks,” Dyer said.

If the levy is approved, “we just plan on maintaining the great programming that we offer to the public and to the schools; the outreach that we provide to the schools.”

The district also is in the process of building a multi-use trail at Unger Park.

If the levy fails, the very district itself faces damaging cuts to not only programming but to staff and maintaining,” Dyer said.

Dyer invites anyone with questions about the upcoming levy to contact him at 419-683-9000 daily till 4 pm.