How Waynesville Residents Shape Park Plans: The Public Input Lifecycle, From Survey to Skate Park

Waynesville residents actively shape park plans through an iterative public input process, where feedback from surveys and open houses directly influences priorities like skate park upgrades and facility improvements. The article details this lifecycle, showing how specific comments translate into tangible park developments.

Amélie Dubois

October 14, 2026 · 5 min read

Waynesville residents who want a say in their parks have more than one door into the process, and the town has a track record of listening. Community feedback has already shaped priorities for the 10-year Parks and Recreation plan — rebuilding the tennis courts and improving the skate park — and specific requests, like a water fountain at the skateboard park and a weight room expansion at the Recreation Center, appear in the town's planning record. Here is how the process works, and where your comments actually land.

Understanding Waynesville's Public Input Process for Parks

Waynesville's park planning follows an iterative pattern rather than a single hearing. The town gathers broad community input first, then translates what it hears into draft plans and priorities, then brings those drafts back to the public for another round of review. The town's own master plan page describes the shape of this effort: more than 500 residents and visitors helped shape the 10-year plan through a community survey, two public open houses, and a steering committee, and the resulting document reviews every park and facility the town operates while setting five goals.

The town's Systemwide Parks Master Plan states that its Capital Improvement Plan — the roadmap for acquiring, renovating, and developing parks over the planning period — was prepared with input from department staff and public involvement. In other words, public comments do not vanish into a suggestion box; they feed into the ranked list of projects the town intends to pursue.

Documented stages of public input in Waynesville park planning
Stage	How It Works	What It Produces
1. Initial needs gathering	Community surveys, public open houses, and a steering committee collect broad input on park needs and priorities.	A record of what residents want across the whole park system — the raw material for the plan.
2. Draft plan review	Interactive drop-in sessions let the public review large maps of proposed concept plans and mark ideas, concerns, and priorities directly on them.	Refined priorities and concept plans shaped by a second round of feedback.
3. Final plan and capital improvement planning	Findings are folded into the plan, which assigns each recommended action a cost level, time frame, and responsible department.	A 10-year guide for how the town improves and invests in parks, greenways, recreation centers, and programs.

Case Study: Community Feedback Shaping Recreation Park Plans

The clearest evidence that comments matter is what shows up in the planning record afterward. The Systemwide Parks Master Plan lists the issues and comments mentioned most often during public input, including a water fountain and lights for the skateboard park, restrooms and clay courts at the tennis courts, a 50-meter pool among swimming improvements, and weight room expansion at the Waynesville Recreation Center.

That early feedback echoed forward into the current 10-year plan. Following community open houses and an online survey, the department identified two main priorities, according to Parks and Recreation Director Luke Kinsland. "Our biggest thing has been improving existing facilities and maintaining those facilities, but during the public input sessions we really heard a lot about rebuilding the tennis courts; the skate park improvements are very much needed," he said. Kinsland noted the tennis courts, built in 1996, will need to be rebuilt from the ground up after earlier resurfacing done with ARP funds ran its course.

The through-line is visible: residents asked for skate park and tennis court improvements in the earlier round of input, and those same items emerged as the department's top priorities in the next planning cycle. A comment made at a drop-in session or in a survey became a named capital priority.