Greensboro Plan2Play Parks and Recreation Master Plan 2019

154 - FEBRUARY 2019

#10 CONNECT Connect & Empower Individuals Across the Department The City of Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department currently employs 148 full-time equivalent staff positions across four divisions and hosted 3.8 million visitors to parks and facilities in fiscal year 2017-2018. Improving connectivity among staff within the Department would increase intra-departmental awareness of services and program offerings, maintenance efficiencies, and staff success. This in turn, would have a beneficial impact on end- users, better support the Department’s mission, and improve morale and collaboration among staff. As the city continues to grow, public spaces and amenities will increase in order to provide better services for city residents. More public spaces and amenities means more demands and responsibilities. Within the Department, the Parks Operations Division (POD) is tasked with maintenance and operations. Recommendations for a re-organized structure propose a framework to mitigate the service gaps and enhance the clarity of POD’s internal organization. It is anticipated that this reorganization will allow for more rapid upward mobility of

POD staff, increase care of neighborhood parks, strengthen collaboration, provide labor efficiencies on projects, and create friendly competition among regions resulting in increased pride and morale. The re-organization is proposed within the context of existing staff roles in order to reduce disruption. It is important to note that additional information related to this section can be found in the Appendix E - Greensboro Operations and Maintenance Plan . 10a. Streamline divisions to ensure maximum efficiency. The current POD organizational structure has existed for many years within the Department and has succeeded with the help of unofficial partnerships, excellent teamwork, and hard work. Organize POD around a regional model - Currently, POD has five sections that maintain and manage Greensboro’s open spaces: Regional Parks, Athletic Turf, Specialized Park Services (SPS), Botanical Gardens, and Cemeteries. Plan2Play recommends reclassifying the division into the following sections: Regional Parks, Turf, Parks Services / Trades, Botanical Gardens, and Cemeteries.

Given the large geographic scale of the city – 80,000 acres versus an average of 53,000 acres among its peer cities – the cost of transporting staff, equipment and materials throughout the system is a fundamental challenge. This plan recommends reorganizing POD operations into a model that divides the city into four regions, each with a regional park that will serve as a hub and primary maintenance facility. Regions were developed with an effort to equally distribute parks and facilities and are not tied to any political districts within the city. Within each region, POD will have a hub that will serve as a base of operations for that region. Staff assigned within each region will be responsible for the maintenance and operations of all regional, community, and neighborhood parks within the region’s assigned geographical area. The primary responsibility of staff reporting within the Botanical Gardens section will be to maintain the high level of maintenance and care of the City’s four botanical gardens; with secondary responsibilities to include providing horticultural efforts and expertise at other facilities as required. While spot mowing will be performed by staff, it is expected that most of the mowing within the regions will be performed on a contract basis.