A large team of volunteers has been helping to prepare the rodeo grounds for the 85th annual Williams Lake Stampede coming up next week, June 30 through July 3.“We’ve had a great response to our Monday work bees,” says Stampede association president Fred Thomas.“They have been very well attended with about 40 people turning out every Monday,” Thomas says. “And it’s nice to see so many young people participating this year.”He says one of the major improvements to the Stampede grounds made this year has been the repainting and repair of the big sign over the Grandstand, which says “Home of the Famous Williams Lake Stampede.”The letters really jump out at you now with the red background to match the red roofs of the adjacent buildings and the clean white lettering.Thomas says a volunteer who wants to remain anonymous graciously volunteered to repaint the sign and repair some of the broken letters.“We are really gracious of the fact this individual wants to remain anonymous and do something for Williams Lake. We are very grateful for him doing that,” Thomas says. “He’s a quiet white knight.”Thomas says the other major addition is a new storage garage at a cost about $70,000.The new storage garage is 24-feet wide by 48-feet long and designed to blend in with the new announcers station completed two years ago and the special guest seating area completed about four years ago.In keeping with the theme the building has a red metal roof and log supports at the corners and will be finished in natural spruce channel siding. About a quarter of the cost of the structure came in the form of in-kind donations of time and materials from local business people.Thomas says in-kind donations for the project were made by Durfeld Log and Timber for the support logs, Tim Lloyd Construction for framing, and Marko Zurak for excavation work.Thomas says the new storage garage will replace the two unsightly cargo containers that have served for storage in recent years.Over the past few weeks Thomas says volunteers have been busy on the work bee nights cleaning, painting and repairing fences and livestock pens, and weed eating around the grounds. Unfortunately he says they have also had to paint over graffiti several times.