Now that the warm temperatures associated with spring have arrived, the City of Estevan’s parks and facilities department is out and about, working to enhance the city’s greenspaces and facilities.
Rod March, the manager for the parks and facilities division, said the full complement of summer students has arrived. They have been working on a number of projects to ensure the city is looking good this year.
It will also be a busy year for Communities in Bloom, and for capital projects in the community.
The city is in its second year with the Communities in Bloom program. Parks foreman Shannon Wanner has taken a lot off of March’s plate for the initiative, he said, and has boosted her certification.
The city will be in the evaluated friends category this year, after being in the introductory friends division a year ago. Judges will come to Estevan later this year and evaluate local efforts based on six criteria of tidiness, floral displays, environmental action, heritage conservation, urban forestry and landscaping.
“Probably one of our biggest ones – and we’re going to be tying that in with Operation Clean Sweep, and all through the summer as well – is our tidiness initiative to clean up all the garbage and all that stuff around the city, and make it look a little bit nicer and neater,” said Wanner.
Trees will be planted in the city through the urban forestry component, including 100 trees through a donation from the Rotary Club of Estevan. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Rotary Foundation.
Flowers will be coming in at the end of May, and the city will be organizing a contest to determine the floral arrangement at the corner of King Street and Souris Avenue North.
Other projects are still in the works for some of the other criteria.
“I’m looking forward to participating in it, and seeing what the judges say about our city,” said Wanner.
The city will receive a number of blooms based on the points received.
“We’re going to see how many blooms we get, and see where we can improve for next year, and we’ll keep building this program from year to year,” said Wanner.
Among the capital projects for this year will be upgrades to the Kensington Park Greens. Council has given March the go-ahead for him to fix the drainage issues in the park.
“That park sits at a very low elevation, and that’s why we get those invasive species like fox tail and that moving in, because you get the salts percolating up through the earth, and nothing else will grow there but those salt-tolerant species,” said March.
The low-lying area of the park will be elevated by a metre. Upgrades will take place over a two-year term. He hopes a spray park and a washroom facility can be added this year as well, but that’s dependent on the budget and the drainage and soil work that need to be done.
He also hopes to see a fully-accessible play structure added to Royal Heights Veterans’ Memorial Park. The proper fall protection matting will be installed, eliminating the sand that is currently there.
A new washroom facility will be added for the spray park at Royal Heights.
The city has also started work on the repairs for 13th Avenue south of the intersection with King Street, and on Souris Avenue North. The median north of Wellock Road has also been completed, and work has now started on the median between Wellock and Edward Place.
They will have the paving stones similar to those installed on Souris Avenue North a couple of years ago, and new self-watering planters.
“We have already started on some of our landscaping projects,” said March. “On our main corridors … we’re updating some of the old broken bricks, the old planters with some of the brick that we had at the city yard.”
A three-year plan has been adopted to complete all of the medians in the city.
A new liner will be added to the paddling pool at the Hillcrest Play Park, and it should be in place before the play park season starts in late June.
The city is also expanding the cemetery entrance into the columbarium area, with new structures, and a proper enclosure of the columbarium gardens.
March said people can look forward to a couple of events happening for a second straight year. The first will be the city’s pre-Canada Day celebrations on June 29. The pre-July 1 bash was held last year for the first time, in honour of Canada’s 150th birthday, and it was a popular event.
Details are still being ironed out, but March said it will be a lot of fun, with some attractions similar to a year ago.
The other event is the Slip ‘N Slide at Royal Heights. A date hasn’t been determined, but March said they will be better prepared for a large crowd this year.
“We have two slides coming, and I’m doing some upgrades to the water delivery system there,” said March. “We’ll have shorter lineups, because we’ll have two slides going, and that should be a blast, too, if the weather holds.”
Pest monitoring is now underway. The local gopher population, for example, is under control. The late spring help with gopher emergence.
“They emerged when there is no food available to them, so our method of using the poison that we use was really effective, because there was nothing else available for them to eat, so they ate the poison,” said March.
Weed control will also start soon.
On the facilities side, people can look forward to new flooring for the Estevan Leisure Centre’s multipurpose room, and the start of a flooring project for the showers in the RM of Estevan Aquatic Centre.
The city will also start work on replacing rooftop HVAC systems atop the leisure centre, which have reached the end of their life cycle. There are nine, but only one or two will be replaced each year.
“This is just all part of that maintenance program where you find that apex of what it costs to keep something going, versus what it costs to buy a new one,” said March.
March said the two divisions have been operating under the same umbrella, creating efficiencies throughout the division by sharing resources. It’s a reality of the economic times in the city, and part of his mandate is to find those efficiencies, along with external funding, while meeting the needs and expectations of people in the community.
