The village of Panama looked at their schedule for the upcoming year, discussing a potential new landscaping or beautification of the village project. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

As a new year begins, so do plans in the village of Panama for major events and other items on the schedule for 2025.

During the January meeting the village board discussed some of the yearly normal activities that will come up for the village throughout the year, including the budget schedule, Memorial Day, and road and sidewalk repairs. The board then looked at some possible new ideas for things for the village to do, such as a potential landscaping or beautification of the yards of village residents in the spring.

“I like how Jamestown does the beautify your yard thing in the spring,” Village Trustee Kim Davis said. “We’ve thrown that idea around before to encourage people to take time on their landscaping and grow gardens and stuff like that. Kind of like the light contest but not, you would get a small yard sign that says ‘I helped beautify Panama in 2025’ or something.”

Davis said it would be a way to recognize people who put the work into their property and landscaping. Davis noted that it may be expensive to have multiple signs made and that it would be possible to just send some sort of thank you to those who choose to participate. Another option that the board discussed would be having a “yard of the week” sign that could move from place to place each week.

Mayor William Schneider agreed with the idea, saying it could be another way that the village can engage with residents.

“It’s just a different mechanism for engaging residents in the community,” Schneider said.

A name suggestion for the project was “Panama Pride”, focusing on having it be something to help residents work on being proud of the work they put in on their properties for the village. Schneider said it would be nice for the village to also join in the tree planting program for a similar project, and that he would look into doing that. He suggested a kick off for the program on Arbor Day at the end of April, and include planting the trees as a part of it.

A question was asked about putting trees next to the road and how far away that had to be to not cause problems, and Schneider said in the past they had looked into planting Cerbus Berry trees but faced the issue of not knowing where to plant them because of the way the bank is set and that they had to be planted on village properties, along with how the salt on the road in the winter may affect tree growth.

“A lot of municipalities have that issue,” Schneider said. “There’s a lot of mainstream America that had beautiful trees lining the roads that had to be cut because they outgrow it, get too big and become a safety hazard like they have in Panama.”

Schneider said they could also look into giving residents free tree saplings to plant on their properties, following some restrictions the village would give them as to how close they could get to the road. He added that the village will continue to look into and think about this, and anything with this project or any other new ideas can be brought back up at a later date.