Park maintenance is somewhat of a misnomer because over the years, separate and apart, parks inherited right-of-ways, medians, town hall green areas and more. Add four pools, buildings, installation of playground equipment and repair, ball fields, fence lines, snow removal, rehabbing old picnic tables and building new, we could easily have kept four employees busy on a year-round basis; much of the time we made due with one! Whether it be a government office building, a school system or high rise downtown, two of the most important positions without which an enterprise can survive have to be a secretary and a maintenance man; I had the best of both!
In 1972 I knew I hit the big time when the town board approved a truck and finally that one maintenance man. No more bags of cement in the trunk of my car, nor rake and shovel handles protruding from my sunroof like a Fuller Brush man on wheels. The maintenance “suite” was a rickety old wooden garage with rats and rodents near the railroad tracks on Old Liverpool Road behind an office building. Had it been in view, residents and other passersby would have demanded its condemnation. High tech features included a dirt floor, no windows and for certain no garage door opener; that would have required power. The only light source was by day. That meant summer, winter, rain or shine, the heavy sliding door had to be open to see nose in front of face. We hung our burlap bags of grass seed from the rafters, but of course the rats won that one. The town clerk would not go there without someone from highway by her side. She had the adjacent upscale stall complete with cement floor upon which sat vaults containing town records — yours and mine. There came a time when she lost most of them and I everything but the truck due to flooding. Things got markedly better when the highway department built a second garage on Factory Avenue and parks got a corner of the old building complete with electric lights, a cement floor and heat, too!
In the interest of economy, a number of innovations were instituted. For example, it seemed like such a waste of taxpayer money for a crew to return to the highway barn for lunch before finishing in one of our larger parks a good distance away. I budgeted one-car maintenance garages in those parks that had no storage facilities to house mowers and tools and assigned a worker exclusive to that park. Our mobile units would drop off five-gallon cans of gas on a timely basis for mowers and weed-whackers and when appropriate pick up a riding mower for service and drop off a replacement. There came a time when a politician did not see the wisdom in economy, but thankfully voters came to the rescue, the result of which we were able to continue to save taxpayer dollars. Another strategy was to maintain an inventory of “spare” riding mowers, weed whackers, pool pump motors, etc. I have heard it said we have two seasons in CNY: Fourth of July and winter. We could ill afford a seized pool motor and the turn-around time ordering a replacement. The accompanying down time, especially on a hot day with kids in bathing suits standing outside the pool fence, to say nothing about our learn-to-swim tots, would have been disastrous. Better to be guilty by commission than omission when serving the public, given our abbreviated summers.
Over the years we were able to accumulate a fleet of tractors, mowers, trucks and a seasonal crew commensurate with our responsibilities. A very long way from that rickety, old wooden garage near a little creek prone to flooding when Mother Nature moved to her next adventure each spring.
Next week: special programs.