Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 05/14/1992

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Your resource with volunteers. Properly organized, they are the means rd; a~omplish many of your projects. You need to organize yrmr ~mployees and the materials needed. Vo nteers creatingla' ' successful program BY HARRY GROSS, 'PARKS DIRECTOR DUNEDIN, FLORIDA Most of us, whether in lhe gUblic or private sectors, are faced il pith. lever-in- creasing budget constrmnfi; W!..'th each new fiscal year. The mare~m~eosts of getting things done, when c~b~e~l with frozen or reduced allocatibn i~f funds and manpower, can only lm~ea~¢gaave impact on how, or wbether,~ing$ do get done. Unfortunately, as most ;df u~ can at- test, our "clients", either the~oubJlc, club members, or customers, d*~ah ever- increasing mnge,,of servic~,;an{quality. At a time when 'exc¢llene~" ~ a buzz word, anything else is ~f~a }~n as incompetence. While our !eli~ts may r ogni e that badge cod e ist, they can be largely unsy~_a~ic, ex- pecting us to simply find ~re~feative solutions to our problema. It is my opinion that som~of ~, more creative solutions are thos~ w~leh in- volve the clients themselve,~ G?ing the client the opportunity to p~da!pate in providing new or better sorvlce~has two major advantages: The firs~t is !hat ~m- proved services will aery Ibc pro- vided; and the second is thatJ~e ~main- ing complaints can becomq lcsii ,threat- ening. After all, ~f someon, gon~nues to complmn after being she ~Wn l:~o~ the budget limitations which ha'_ve Ohused a problem and the way he ~ar ~he can participate in its solution~)he~, those complaints may be taken l,~s. s~riously by those in authority. In Dun ~'.~n!~lorida we have used a comprehen~ive~lalan'of volunteerism to achieve sohitiofl~ (or at . r~ ~ least make inroads) to many 9f t~e/prob- lems with which we have b~n {~ed. Through construction, ¢l,,~an~p, and 12 PARK/GROUNDSMANAOE~E~ 12/91 renovation projects, Dunedin has achieved a much-enhanced park sys- tem, a denser city-wide tree canopy, and an overall improvement in the appear- ance of the city. For example, in the area of cons~uction, a $50,000 pavilion was built over a small lake atour main Com- munity Center by the Dunedin North Rotary Club. They raised the funds and arranged for the construction of the fa- cility, which is now used for band con- certs, dance exhibitions, and a host of other community activities. In the same park a 14 station, one mile fitness trail was cons~ucted by the Dunedin Kiwanis Club. The club paid for thematerial and provided most of the labor to complete the project. The city's Adopt-A-Park program has made use of nearly every conceivable local organi- zation to accomplish its goals. A local Boy Scout troop alone has contributed over one thousand volunteer hours con- structing nature trails, installing sprin- kler systems, repotting plants in the city nursery, and landscaping small parks and playgrounds. At this date at least a dozen local boys have achieved the rank of Eagle Scout by doing projects for the City Parks Division. Homeowners Associations have also gotten into the act by upgrading the landscaping and/or assuming the main- tenance of the traffic islands leading into their neighborhoods, and a great deal of tree planting has taken place in Dunedin through the efforts of volunteers. In the past four years, over four thousand new ~xees havebeen planted in the city through the Adopt-A-Tree program, the local Rotary Club's Commemorative Tree ~ogram, and projects undertaken by the local high school, the Boy Scouts, a local preschool, and through numerous individual contributions of both money and labor. Establishing a successful volunteer program can be surprisingly easy if the task is broken down into its components and implemented one step at a time. The first step is to make a list of potential projects. This is done by sim- ply looking over your situation and de- ciding what needs to be done. Where does litter need to be picked up? Are there playgrounds which need to be re- constructed? Are there parks which need to be landscaped? A list of projects is not hard for most of us to produce. The next step is to identify the poten- tial volunteer groups or individuals to take on these projects. In Dunedin this list included the Boy Scouts, the local high school with its numerous service clubs, the neighborhood associations, and the civic organizations and clubs which exist in nearly every town. It was then necessary to make the potential volunteers aware of our needs. This was done by preparing a slide ~re- sentation in which was included photos of areas around town in need of im- provement. Our presentation also in- cluded photos which educated the audi- ence as to what the Parks Division's basic mission was, how we accomplished it, and why we need assistance. Fortunately we had an example of a volunteer project to include in our slide show--a small piece of land belonging to the city which had been landscaped and was being maintained by a local garden club. Our presentation therefore had three elements: What we did and why we could not do more, what someone else had done to help, and what still needed to be done. The presentation was designed to get its audience think- ing about how they could help out, per- haps by taking one of the pictured parks on as a project for landscaping or main- tenance. Once a slide show is assembled, you will need to arrange to show it to poten- tial volunteer organizations. In Dunedin's case this was done in two ways. The city's Public Relations Advi- sory Committee was given thepresenta- tion and asked for help in publicizing the need for volunteers. The PRAC ar- ranged for the presentation to be given to