(A) Maintenance includes not only repairing playground equipment and mowing grass, but also includes plant, lawn and tree care, maintaining the equipment used for maintenance and preparing athletic fields for use.
(B) The following suggestions should be considered in regards to maintenance of parks:
(1) Prepare a seasonal calendar of maintenance work that needs to be completed at different times of the average year, so the work can be more easily scheduled following a routine year after year;
(2) Use a checklist to check-off maintenance work that is needed on each parcel of borough parkland;
(3) Carefully design new recreational facilities to hold maintenance to a reasonable minimum, such as using low-maintenance native plantings, reforesting certain areas, letting some areas “go natural” especially immediately along waterways, establishing no mow buffers and laying out grass areas so that they are wide enough for a large tractor-mower;
(4) Involve experienced maintenance workers in reviewing the design of proposed recreational facilities;
(5) Request that recreation groups accept primary responsibilities for preparing athletic fields for their use prior to each game (such as lining of fields, putting out bases, raking the infield and occasionally cutting the infield grass at the discretion of the Public Works Foreman). This would free the borough Public Works Department to concentrate on routine grass cutting and major maintenance; and
(6) Park clean up days could be established in the spring and fall. Residents would help with cleanup of the parks from winter debris and the like.
(C) The long-term expenses of maintaining and repairing recreational facilities must be considered in the design of facilities. This includes the time needed for a worker and equipment to move between sites. Therefore, over the long-run, it may be desirable to have limited types of maintenance equipment, such as a riding mower, stored within a small building within a park.
(D) Groups of adjacent homeowners may be willing to assume certain maintenance responsibilities for passive open spaces adjacent to their homes because they would have the most interest in seeing that these lands were well-maintained.
(E) As additional facilities and lands are developed, consideration should be given to writing a maintenance manual that would establish a complete system for all of the maintenance that is needed.
(Ord. passed 8-3-2015)