Denver Parks and Recreation has scrambled to stay on top of upkeep in the city’s green spaces after temporary city budget cuts prompted by the migrant crisis delayed spring hiring, department officials say.
The result has been longer grass, along with plentiful dandelions and other weeds, spotted by visitors to Mestizo-Curtis Park in Five Points, Mamie D. Eisenhower Park in University Hills and other parks in recent weeks. The lagging upkeep is a lingering side effect as the city has eased up on the budget cutbacks ordered by Mayor Mike Johnston earlier this year.
Relief is on the way at parks, city officials say. It just may not be on full display until the summer barbecue season, after the Fourth of July.
The Parks and Rec department is short 25 staffers in its pool of roughly 200 full-time employees who focus on parks upkeep, department officials said Wednesday.
But the cupboard for seasonal park workers is even more bare.
The city typically hires 130 on-call workers each year to handle mowing, edging, weed control and other beautification work, according to Scott Gilmore, the department’s deputy director for parks. As of Wednesday, the number of seasonal workers who were actually on call was around 20.
By next week, parks officials hope to get another 40 workers on board and ready to mow, Gilmore said. From there, they have their sights set on being fully staffed, or close to it, by the end of June.
“I would ask people to just give our staff some grace and understand that we have been incredibly short-staffed — and we still have our parks looking halfway decent,” Gilmore said.
Parks are typically mowed on a weekly basis during the warm-weather months, according to Gilmore. The department may be running a few days behind here and there, he said, but it’s largely staying close to that schedule.
Visitors might notice some shabbier conditions on the fringes while the department works to hire people and train them on the tasks at hand.
“The edging, the weeding, some of the weed control around trees — just some of the detail work that makes a park look really beautiful — some of those things will be lacking for a while, until we get staffed up,” Gilmore said.
Ballfields, for instance, are typically mowed twice a week. They are now on a weekly cadence until Parks and Rec has more bodies.
The lag in staffing dates back to early February, when the mayor announced a combined $5 million in budget cuts centered on reduced hours at city recreation centers and Department of Motor Vehicle offices. He also reduced spring programming organized by Parks and Recreation.
City officials since have pivoted their migrant response plans to focus on providing a much more robust set of services to a smaller number of migrants. That pivot came with a lower price tag — estimated at $90 million this year, compared to worst-case scenarios costing up to $180 million that officials were preparing for in February. Late this month, the city began restoring recreation center hours.
After that pivot in April, Parks and Rec also received the green light to hire to meet its need for full-time and seasonal, on-call workers, officials say.
But that delay has caused carry-over effects, Gilmore said. The city had many on-call workers it would rehire every year, but this year a chunk of that workforce found employment elsewhere before Denver could put out its call for help.
The seasonal crews this year are taking a little more seasoning to get ready, Gilmore said.
“Our parks are incredibly busy right now,” Gilmore said. “And we want to make our parks beautiful.”
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