Hollister
– In the face of substantial budget cuts and a 50 percent staff
reduction, the city’s parks department is looking for help from
Hollister residents.
Hollister – In the face of substantial budget cuts and a 50 percent staff reduction, the city’s parks department is looking for help from Hollister residents.
“Our parks are not looking great, because we just don’t have the staffing,” said parks Supervisor Marcello Orta.
Orta and Community Services Director Clay Lee said that if the parks are going to stay pretty, the city is going to need help. Anyone who wants to pitch in would be welcome, Lee said, and the city could lend them both the equipment needed and a city employee who could direct the work.
Some help is already in hand. Orta said the Fairview 4-H Club has continued its annual tradition of pruning the Dunne Park rose garden. Around 20 children worked for three hours to trim the 185 bushes, and Lee said their help was invaluable.
“Something like the rose garden, it’s not difficult, but it takes a number of bodies to do it,” Lee said.
Fairview 4-H leader Teresa Mitzel said the the 4-H kids, who ranged in age from seven to 14, are community service regulars, but they were particularly jazzed that Lee and Orta told them how important their work was.
“It feels good to help them out,” said Mitzel’s 14-year-old son Jordan. “It was fun being out there, pruning and talking with friends.”
Teresa Mitzel said the Fairview club and other local 4-H clubs are willing to do even more to help out. She’s asked the city for a list of possible volunteer projects, and Orta said he’ll be putting the list together soon.
In addition to caring for a dozen parks, the city parks department has to maintain more than seven miles of landscaped soundwalls, so the city could particularly use some help with landscaping.
Larger groups of volunteers would be the most useful, Lee said, but any help would be appreciated, and the work could range from a one-time commitment of a few hours to regular maintenance of a specific area.
“If you can get 10 or 12 people from a neighborhood, we get more bang for our buck,” Lee said. “But clearly, we won’t turn people away.”
Lee said the city lost three of its seven full-time employees, with a fourth on long-term disability leave. Most of them left shortly before voters defeated Measure R, a proposed sales tax, in November. The defeat of that measure led to the current budget cuts. Lee said he knew there could be big cuts on the horizon, so he left the positions empty.
“We didn’t want to go through the heartache of laying people off,” he said.
The parks department has been phasing in service reductions over the past 30 days, Lee said. Overall, city workers will be focusing on pressing situations, such as keeping playground equipment safe or making sure the branches of Hollister’s 5,000 trees don’t scratch the tops of buses or cars.
Some landscaping and maintenance will be neglected, Lee said, and the city will have to cut back on water. The water facility at Valley View Park will be shut down, and all city parks are likely to start looking a little more brown.
Park restrooms, which can take six hours a day to maintain, will be closing on March 1, Lee said. Those include restrooms at Park Hill, Calaveras and Dunne parks.
“If there’s a true emergency or a real problem, we’ll try to resolve it as best we can,” Lee said.
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or ah*@fr***********.com.
