Park district collects $1,568.39 from Riverwalk fountains

You've heard of three coins in the fountain, right?

Maybe you've even tossed a penny in yourself, thinking it might bring a little luck.

Well, ask the folks who clean the fountains along Naperville's Riverwalk and they'll tell you all that silver and copper can add up to some serious coin -- as in $1,568.39.

That's how much change Naperville Park District Operations Manager Chuck Papanos says cleaning crews collected last year from the three fountains along the downtown path. And that isn't unusual -- they garnered $15.31 more than that in 2006.

The workers keep all the money in one place and then turn it into a bank at the end of the season. The proceeds are pumped right back into the park district's Riverwalk budget to maintain the path and plant flowers as part of what Papanos calls "a continual contribution" from the community.

This year, he said, the coins filled three 5-gallon buckets.

He didn't weigh them, Papanos said, but each was too heavy for one person to carry.

So team members plopped the coins into bags instead and lugged them to the bank.

"I purposely have not asked the staff what kind of look they got from the teller," he said.

Crews clean each fountain once a week during the summer season, draining the water, scrubbing the bottoms and walls, and plucking out all those pennies, nickels and dimes.

(For those of you scoring at home, the path's water features are the Dandelion Fountain at Webster Street, the Horse Trough Fountain at Main Street and the Exchange Club Memories Fountain at Fredenhagen Park.)

The coins don't cause any damage, Papanos said, and aren't a particular problem to remove.

"The only hard thing is that we use some chlorine tablets in the fountains, so when we take out the coins we have to rinse them and wipe them off," he said. "Otherwise, they'd have some white chlorine scum on them and the bank doesn't like that."

There aren't too many people tossing coins into the fountains at this time of year, of course, but don't despair if you've got a couple pennies burning a hole in your pocket. Papanos says the park district hopes to have the fountains back up and running by the second week of May -- just in time for Mother's Day.