Spruce Up Day

Last week, about eight staff members participated in our first volunteer Spruce Up Day. We left our offices for an afternoon to work on the clean-up/beautification of a few spaces near City Hall. Our projects included:

• Plantings in our new self-watering flower pots at City Hall, Police Station and Fire Station (bought on clearance last year),
• Cleaning up and adding new perennials to the garden around the City Park history sign,
• Cleaning up the Police Department lawn, and
• Cleaning up and planting flowers in the Pine Street medians.   

It was fun being outside together, doing something new and I think we all felt like we made a difference in a pretty short period. Many hands do make light work. With that said, I was awfully sore the next three days.  

Part of the idea was to help support our parks and streets crews who are pretty overwhelmed this time of year. The last two springs have been very wet, which cuts down on mowing time and causes grass to grow at record speed. Our Parks crew has a lot to juggle -  in addition to maintaining jungle-like conditions in our parks, playing field season starts and they begin to prep the pool for reopening. We rely a lot on seasonal help to support our parks and cemeteries but most of that help isn’t available to help until the school year ends. They work very hard just to keep up with the basics and we appreciate the work that they do.