Parks department service levels adjusted for $125,000 hit

City council approved a new level of service for city parks Monday following a $125,000 reduction to the department's budget during budget talks.

Council voted 8-1 to take the equipment operator and seasonal labourer from the afternoon shift of the boulevard crew and form a second mobile crew.

The move will reduce the service levels for boulevard and turf maintenance which would mainly affect sports groups, parks manager Flavio Viola said in a report to council.

Asked to elaborate on Monday, Viola said the smaller baseball fields.

"This crew was used as the back up for the crew that does work on there," Viola said. "If there was a mechanical breakdown, this crew would be sent to smaller baseball fields to mow the grass."

Having two mobile crews would allow for high priority areas to be maintained once every 10 working days, medium priority areas, namely neighbourhood parks, every 20 to 23 working days and low priority areas would be serviced as required or when time permits.

In approving the change, council endorsed a staff recommendation.

"No pun intended, but these guys are on the ground and they know what's going on and so for us to look at any other option would be contrary to our professionals who know what they're doing out there," Coun. Lyn Hall said.

Two other options were presented:

- Reduce the three mobile crews to one so that high priority parks would have been serviced once every 15 working days, medium priority areas once every 30 to 35 working days and low priority areas on an as required basis or when time permits.

- Reassign the urban forestry aborist and the special events trade assistant to form a second mobile crew.

Urban forestry work would have been limited to street and boulevard tree maintenance and tree maintenance at civic facilities and groups would no longer have the assistance of city staff for events such as Canada Day and weddings at Rainbow Park.

"We provide litter pickup, we provide extra help setting up the user groups, setting up signs, anything that they need that we can help with," Viola said.

But the service levels would for high, medium and low priority areas would have been the same as for the option council supported.

Coun. Brian Skakun was the lone council member to vote against.

"I think we're going backwards," he said. "Community beautification, community pride is taking a hit no matter what option we approve here.

"We can afford to spend millions of dollars on the Canada Winter Games but we can't afford to maintain our parks and I think that's really unfortunate.

"We have some budget constraints, I realize that, but I think we're going backwards and we're going to pay for it."

Mayor Shari Green said that even with the tough choices made in January, the property tax levy is still going up by four per cent.

"This is a decision that we have made, we have impacted our ability to mow to grass in a lot of areas and we will see through the summer what impact that is," Green said.

The $125,000 reduction amounted to the loss of two full-time equivalent positions.