Notes from Town Square: Parks are a year-round job

Parks and Recreation - synonymous with summer fun and lots of sunshine.

However, we are busy all year long. As winter descends upon Green River, citizens head indoors and hopefully to the Recreation Center where it is easy to see that the staff there is busier than ever running leisure programs or preparing for special events. The parks division is not always as obvious, although ever so present.

For the parks staff, the winter months are filled with many tasks. It is this time of year not only for maintaining areas that have no “down season”, like the cemetery and building maintenance, or managing annual events like hanging Christmas lights; we are also busy preparing for spring and summer. It is during these cold dark hours of the year that we undertake both rewarding duties, and endure the many laborious hours of snow removal.

Directly after the all the parks and the splash pad are winterized, we initiate the preseason preparations for the following year; we conduct tasks such as small engine repairs, or getting our summer equipment all tuned up and ready to go. We seize the opportunity to perform inside building maintenance; painting, remodeling, moving furniture, relocating offices and even building office furniture. Yes, we do make handcrafted, custom desks and furniture at a great saving to the city budgets.

We reface parks signs, check inventories of turf, weed and irrigation supplies, not to mention prepping for the annual mosquito control program; all this so that we will be set and ready once spring arrives.

Each year after Thanksgiving we are out and about putting up all the bright Christmas decorations along Flaming Gorge Way, The Clock Tower Plaza, Uinta, Upland and Cow Pasture Park. Then a month later we take it all down, prepare it for next year and place it in storage.

We are very active working behind the scenes at events like the annual Crystal Classic Winter Festival, Middle School New Year’s Eve Party, the Mayor’s Tree Lighting, etc., and assisting with the set-up, take down and anything needed in between. All this and more is addressed in the few winter hours when we’re not clearing snowfall and ice.

The parks staff clears approximately 14 miles of sidewalks, trails and pathways each time it snows. On a typical winter morning you will see staff out before the city comes to life with the hustle and bustle of daily activity. In an effort to assist with the safety of our community as they battle winter in Wyoming, we have an average of nine employees working for four hours on a typical round of snow removal.

There are days that one round is finished only to start all over again. We clear sidewalks, walkways and other pertinent areas at all city owned buildings and parks. Then we clear the greenbelt and other pathways and trails.

You might see us along Flaming Gorge Way, on Uinta, at City Hall, the Police Department, Recreation Center, Child Development Center, the Visitors Center, at any one of our 29 parks or along the Greenbelt, but wherever you see us, there will see a busy individual at the working end of a shovel.

As Mother Nature dictates the schedule, whether it is winter, spring, summer or fall, you will see the Parks and Recreation Department staff working diligently to provide our community with fun activities, clean and well-groomed parks, pathways and trails, and bringing that Norman Rockwell feeling to the community we call home.