 As we move into fall, the South Portland Recreation Department is wrapping up its summer projects and getting ready for new activities. Tom got an update from the department's director, Rick Toll. Rick, thanks for joining us. It's great to have you here. Glad to be here again. Yeah, so something's always happening in Parks and Recreation in South Portland. What's the latest? Well, we've got a lot going on, wrapping up from fall, getting ready to go into winter. We have our Liberty Ship Memorial Project that just got reconditioned. It came out phenomenal, and that's done at Buglight Park. So people can kind of meander out there and see that. Mill Creek, our internal park within the downtown area between Nightville and Route 77, is in really good shape, and that's wrapping up. The stonework there is phenomenal in the plantings. And then also our newest and best playground that we've done recently, and it's in Wayne Wright Recreation Complex off Highland Avenue. That's come out excellent, too. So we're really proud of that. I think it's a staff effort. We built it internally for the first time, too. Park's team received the product from Landscape Structures, and then we built it. So it's been a good fall with all of those things. Could you describe a little bit about the Liberty Ship Project, what that's about? Yeah, historically, the city of South Portland, we had a shipyard that built obviously the ships, and they were sent overseas to participate in, obviously, the effort of the World Wars. So we set up a memorial there, and that memorial is a large structure, a bow of a ship, and it's really neat for kids to see and interact with, and it has interpretive panels that tell the history of the site that is now Bug Light Park. So originally it was that shipyard, and now it is Bug Light Park. So that sits on the property and facing the Casco Bay and the Atlantic. And that's all new? No, it's been there for several years, quite a few years, but we had to recondition it. I see. We had the exterior of it because of the harsh conditions out there, and the metal, as you can imagine, even on a regular ship, you have to paint it every so often. It is the battleship gray that you would traditionally see, but it needed it. It was time for an update, and the city council more than generously supported that, and the city manager, and it's come out really nice. Oh, good. Is that something that people can visit all year round? Yeah, you can go there anytime, year round. It's an open public park from sunrise to sunset, and it's a really nice place if you want to go, and then off to the side there's a grassy area too that overlooks Casco Bay and Peaks Island that you can sit out there and have a picnic. So if it's, you know, November and we have a nice day or even, you know, January and you're out there walking around, you could go for a walk and see it. Cool. Now you mentioned the stonework in Mill Creek. What's that about? Well, we put in a lot of the areas and upgraded in the first phase of three phases. We put a lot of the infrastructure in, including that stonework, and the masonry that's been done there, Tony and his crew, those guys have done a great job, and a local person, who was an archer on a paper recently, they came to me and asked, hey, I've got these boats I carve out of granite, sailboats. And I said, that's amazing. And they said, I'd be willing to kind of help you with this and put them in on the pedestals that are going to be the columns that face Ocean Avenue and Broadway. We have a big formal archway entrance that's going to go in there. And I said, could you carve me to the face inward, one at each other, the bow? And he said, yeah, I could do that. Yeah, he did it, and we put them in the columns and it's going to really add a nice feature. And that whole stonework and that architectural stuff, the regime of the architect, the landscape architect of the project, did a good job. You'd be surprised it pops out and it looks really nice, especially in the fall. You've got to make a point to see that. Now, you also offer classes and there's another cycle coming up? Yeah, October leads into winter, late fall into winter, and typically we kind of start slowing down when you should be kind of continuing all the hard work you put in over the summer. Whether it's you've been biking or running or walking, whatever your fitness level, you want to continue that because you don't want it to be in cycles. It's bad for you to go high and low, high and low, and you don't want to go dormant over the winter. So we encourage you to use the South Portland Community Center, which has a 12th mile track inside, to walk around. We also encourage you to use Red Bank Community Center for various activities, ranging from resumba classes and art classes to other types of fitness and other types of activity. But even if it's just going and being around other people and being active, because it is also mental wellness too. And it can get hard going to work in the dark and come in home in the dark. Oh, yeah. You know, we take that for granted in Maine, but it really does have an effect on us. So heading into spring next year, your goal ought to be through the winter to keep up as much as you can. That's great. There's probably tens of stuff that's going on that we could talk about for more than five minutes. But if people want more information, how did they get it? Well, they could go to our website with the city, southportland.org, and then look under Parks and Recreation and it lists all our facilities and our programs. They have a virtual or interactive brochure that you can go in. It's really neat. You can click through the pages and it'll take you right to the classes to sign up. So it's really easy and fun. You also can call us at 207-767-7650, which is our main office number. And you can talk to staff and they're ready to help you. And you can get signed up for classes or they can tell you how or give you general information. So there's lots of different ways to get ahold of us, but the most important step is starting the process and reaching out. That's great. It sounds like it's hard to be bored in South Portland. Yeah, it is. Thanks for joining us. Well, thank you. Thank you.