Fleming splash pad ground design contest winner announced

The Town of Fleming is working towards building a brand new Splash Pad, with help of local contractor Jeff Schiel of Schiel Construction and other local contractors, with plans for it to be complete by early September 2022. This bid for construction was brought to the Fleming Town Council during the July Town Council Meeting and accepted.

Jeff Schiel brought up that there is the ability to create a design on the ground of the Splash Pad using a material that resembles sand art in installation. The Town Council came up with the idea to run a design contest and open it up to Fleming residents and have a local resident create this design. The plan was to run the contest through the next few weeks and vote on the final design at the next Town Council Meeting.

The contest ran for about three weeks and ended Aug. 10, the day of the August Town Council meeting. The contest was open to Fleming residents of any age. Submissions from Town Council members or their families were accepted as well, but kept anonymous from the other Town Council members. Over those three weeks, designs were submitted from Fleming residents of all ages, with a total of 21 submissions overall.

The Town Council members present were Mayor Stefan Betley and Council Members Bonnie Jackson, Alex Gapter, Cathy Castillo, and Suzanne Wales. All designs were hung up before council members arrived and all submissions were anonymous to the members voting. Each Council Member was given three slips of paper to vote anonymously for three different designs without discussion. Once votes were casted, all other designs were taken down leaving the top three designs for the Council Members to look at and discuss before a final vote took place.

The five Council Members present discussed the top three designs. Mayor Stefan Betley emphasized how impressed he was by all the submissions and all the Council Members agreed and expressed appreciation to everyone who participated. The final vote was cast, where each member only voted for one of the three final designs, and the design with the most votes was #21.

The winning design, design #21, was created by local Fleming Family, the Wales. The Wales Family worked together to create this design where they wanted to express children coming together and playing as a community. They even created a 3D model of the design to show where they thought the splash pad equipment could fit in. For a prize, the Town Council put together a small gift basket with some summer goodies and gift cards donated from Sterling-based local businesses Sam and Louie's and Simkin's Parlor as a thank you.

There will be more opportunities for Fleming Residents to take part in helping complete the Splash Pad with a chance to be memorialized.