Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 08/15/2002

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and small utility vehicles - are used year-round Interest- ingly, the cost of maintenance is not much different. The cost for fuel is higher, with more vehicles being operated, but it was a negligible hit on the budget. We ended up with more vehicles doing more work and it worked more effi- ciently.'' [n another example, park operations assessed the use of three larger tractors with belly mowers. Based on the analy- sis the park bought one 14-foot mowing unit and a smaller tractor that has a cab, a push blade for snow and a belly mower. "For the same amount of money we're down one unit but we can actually do more - they're faster and we have . two operators rather than three," says Dice. "The third guy's out doing things we always wanted to do but couldn't get to before because he was on the tractor cutting grass." Not everything is plugged into the system and spit out for evaluation. You still have to do some things the old-fash- ioned way. "'What works best is allowing the individual emplo e e' to chart a career path with training. An example of this is the park's "grow, no mow" pro- gram, where many of areas are passed over by the mowers. Dice points out that national parks like Glacier and Yellowstone do very little, if any, mowing in comparison to their total acreage. Cleveland Metroparks decided to import this theory on a smaller scale, realizing that the aesthetics of a national park where wildlife is king is different than a regional, urban/sub- urban park. In some cases they had to go back and mow some areas, but overall the program cut down on mowing, saving time and ultimately money. "That was a little bit of a tough transition at first, but the time the guys formerly spent mowing they could instead fix that shelter roof or trail you've been trying to get to," says Dice. "It wasn't just a save -money-and-labor situation, it was also a way we could improve natural resources." In the same way, park operations created a trails initia- tive where the park manager, natural resources manager, outdoor education and visitor services regularly meet to look at the trail system. They also meet with user groups to see if they want to keep or eliminate the trail, and to figure out at what level they want to maintain it based on their minimum operational standards. These minimum operational standards are different than typical maintenance standards, which are often couched in more how-to guidelines, as in, fix this that way, clean this that way, and so on. Minimal operational standards plug into a management system in measurable quantities. The Standard "A minimal operational standard might say for every 120 people who go in the door we're going to clean the rest room, so we count how many people go through the door," explains Dice. "We know it takes 30 minutes to clean a rest room and we know we have 720 people day, so that means si~ rest room cleanings per day, so you need one and half people to clean rest rooms. Minimal operational standards say you're going to do it this often, but you need this many people to do it with, which will bleed over into budgets." The establishment of minimal operational standards effectively allo- cates supplies, staff and tools. So, in the rest room example, if the resources aren't there to handle it you have to reduce your cleanings, then figure out the effect of that. [t also gives park managers an idea of what to achieve. Twice a year, park operations does a full facility inspection and is creating regular 12-month maintenance books based on the inspections. Once enough