Valley Grande City Council is continuing to invest money into Valley Grande City Park improvements.

The council made a unanimous vote Tuesday to use $12,000 to provide two bleacher sets, concrete slabs to go underneath them and about 83 trees for the park. Purchased by the city’s capital improvements fund, the seating equipment will be placed on the center baseball field while the trees will be planted along Dallas County Road 16.

The council currently has about $38,000 in its capital improvements fund.

“We’re gradually getting our park to where it needs to be, so the little fellows and girls can go out there and play into the night,” Valley Grande Mayor Wayne Labbe said.

Councilman Ronald Sawyer said the new bleachers would need to be installed by winter, so the park will be prepared to host future activities.

“I say we go ahead and get it done,” Sawyer said. “Have it done for the winter and be through with it, and be ready for the summer. We’re going to hopefully have recreational [activities] and all that by the summer.”

The city spent thousands adding equipment to the park in recent years.

The council has approved the purchase of $140,000 lights and a fence around the power station in 2013. The council funded four sets of bleachers in February and a $1,900 facelift to the park that included fresh sod, new plants, new bark for the playground area and an additional flowerbed near the entrance of the park in May.

While they were able to purchase bleachers for two of the baseball fields the previous year, they weren’t financially able to purchase bleachers for the center field, Labbe said.

Because the center field is used for practice and not games, the council decided to spend the money they had at the time to buy bleachers for the other fields.

But with a lack of seating still being an issue, the council has followed through with its’ original intent to provide bleachers for the center baseball field also.

Labbe said it’s vital the bleachers they just approved are placed on concrete slabs, like the other bleachers installed on the other two fields.

“We put our bleachers on slabs, so that we don’t have the grass growing up under them and things like that,” he said. “They can just go around and weeded around them, and it looks good.”

The council may have Cooper Brothers assemble and install the bleachers and set them in place, because the company presented the lowest bid for the previous bleacher installment project. Big Mulberry will be responsible for planting the trees.

Labbe mentioned a future park projects, such as an all-purpose building equipped with a basketball gym and meetings rooms.