The Town of Delafield is conducting an online survey to gauge the community’s needs and interests on potential improvements to the town’s parks and recreational facilities.
“The Town Board has decided that having input from the residents is the most important part in the park process,” Michelle Luedtke, clerk/treasurer of the Town of Delafield, said.
What is on the 2025-30 Town of Delafield Park Plan Survey?
The Town of Delafield currently has a draft for future park plans, and the survey results will be given to the Town Board so supervisors can adjust the draft before approval.
Luedtke said the survey is, “short and to the point, it’s parks-related only.”
In the draft plan, Luedtke and the Town Chairman, Edward Kranick, included improvements like enclosed shelters to avoid wind, updated playground equipment and the addition of a few pickleball courts.
“Our sand volleyball pit is not really getting any attention at all from residents,” Luedtke said. “So, we wanted to know if they wanted to replace that with a couple of pickleball courts. We have the ideas, but we want to make sure that that’s what the people actually want.”
Administrators can see if a resident has taken the survey more than once and will only take into consideration their first set of responses. “One response per resident of the town,” Luedtke said.
There is no deadline yet for when the survey will be taken down, but the analytics will be checked monthly, Luedtke added. Once participation starts to taper down or stops, the Town of Delafield will take it down.
Improvements would be paid for out of impact fees, town officials say
A new subdivision development in Delafield has left the town with about $500,000 in impact fees that must be spent in the next eight years, Luedtke told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Impact fees are used to finance public facilities that are needed for new development ― typically infrastructure like roads, utilities and parks, or public spaces like schools or libraries.
“The impact fee funds can only be used for certain things and the majority of the things they can be used for we don’t have here in the town, so the parks are really the only thing we can use those impact fees for,” Luedtke said.
Once the funds are spent, future operations and maintenance costs will come from the town’s annual operating budget, according to the town’s website.
“We thought, what could we use this on that will be large enough that it is self-sustaining, meaning that we could recoup some of the cost of maintenance,” Luedtke said.
The Town of Delafield is home to four parks
The town of Delafield is home to four park areas, according to the town website.
- Sports Commons, on the corner of Maple Avenue and Silvernail Road, currently has two baseball fields, a soccer/lacrosse field, a sand volleyball court, a playground, a park pavilion and a skate park.
- Located on Golf Road, next to the Highway Department, is Deltown Park, which features a softball field and a miniature sledding hill.
- Elmhurst Park, off of Elmhurst Road, has a pavilion, a walking trail, open fields and a playground.
- North of the Woodbridge Subdivision is Highway KE Park, which has a walking trail and open space.
Plus, the town has many recreational trails, including paths that connect Oconomowoc and Waukesha, according to the town’s website.
To take the 2025-2030 Town of Delafield Park Plan Survey, visit the Town of Delafield website at www.townofdelafield.org.
Liliana Fannin is a 2025 summer intern at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel covering the Milwaukee suburbs. She can be contacted at [email protected].
link