City responds to challenges of maintaining parks
By Tim Kalinowski on August 7, 2021.
LETHBRIDGE HERALDtkalinowski@lethbridgeherald.com The City of Lethbridge is acknowledging it is facing challenges on many fronts with regards to maintaining Legacy Park, and many of those challenges stem back to the park’s original creation in 2018.“The challenge in Legacy Park goes back to the original construction contract,” explains Chris Witkowski, parks planning manager for the City of Lethbridge. Witkowski was responding to resident complaints published in The Herald earlier this week.
“We had some problems with the contractor on site,” he notes. “There are still some deficiencies we are still having to work through even three years later. Most notably it’s the irrigation. We have been having problems with the irrigation system since day one. And this year in particular, we have had a major shutdown of the irrigation system due to some failures.
“You couple that with the pretty intense and sustained heat we have been having throughout the summer– it is just really contributing to the state of the park in particular this year.”
Witkowski acknowledges residents have every right to feel frustrated about the state of Legacy Park, and it’s a frustration he and many of his staff share.
“I definitely understand residents’ concerns over the state of the park,” he says. “I know it is frustrating for the residents. It is frustrating for us as City personnel too. It’s not the state we like to see the park in, but crews are working very hard to keep up with the maintenance and overcome some of these challenges.”
With challenges surrounding the irrigation system stuck in litigation at the moment, Witkowski says the City is attempting to come up with alternative solutions.
“There has been some tree decline out there,” he acknowledges, “and a lot of that goes back to the irrigation issues. And, again, just with the hot summer we have had this year. We do have crews who are manually watering out there. It’s a big park to keep up with manual watering. So we have just implemented a new watering truck specifically for tree watering, and most of that (effort) will be focused on Legacy Park.”
Witkowski says the weed issues noted at Legacy Park have been occurring all throughout the city this summer. With an additional $100,000 allocated by city council, mainly for weed control, at the last regular meeting, Witkowski says he and his staff are trying to put together a plan on how best to use those new resources to have the biggest bang for buck.
“We are still analyzing how best to use that money,” Witkowski confirms. “It could come down to adding staff or using some contractor services to help with the weeds. We are still determining the course of action on that, but it will likely be one of those two options. We are also looking at some possible herbicide treatment. We also have inmates from the county jail who are helping us out with some of this park maintenance as well.
“It’s a program that county jail offers,” he adds for clarification on that last point, ” and we are able to utilize those resources for jons like shrub clean-up and just some general park maintenance– they are a good source to tap into. We have been using them for the past few weeks.”
Witkowski asks for patience from residents as the City brings this weed control program online, and he thanks residents in the Legacy Parks area, in particular, for pitching in to help where they can.
“All I can ask for from residents is their patience,” he says. “I know it is hard to look at the park not in its best state, but we are working on getting those issues resolved and bringing that park up to speed with all the other parks in the city.”
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