The Ukiah City Council recently approved creating a new temporary position for a Volunteer Coordinator, who will be tasked with helping consolidate and direct volunteer efforts to help keep parks and other areas of the city free of trash and graffiti.
“I was really intrigued by this volunteer coordinator for park cleanup,” said Council member Susan Sher, referring to an item on the Consent Calendar during the most recent meeting of the council. “And particularly that there is a ‘Friends of Ukiah Parks’ that has been established. That’s exciting, and will it be like the ‘Friends of the Library?'”
To answer her questions, Community Services Director Neil Davis said that “the Volunteer Coordinator position and the Friends of Ukiah Parks are kind of developing in concert. The detail of what exactly the friends group will look like is not yet exactly certain.”
Davis further explained that “there had been a ‘Friends of the Ukiah Latitude Observatory’ group that fizzled, and so we’re kind of bringing that back in, but expanding it to all of the parks. And I think the Volunteer Coordinator and the recreation team will work together to kind of encourage volunteerism, and encourage people to work through a Friends group, but what exactly that looks like I think will (be evolving).”
In terms of what kinds of cleanups people will undertake, Davis said people should always “work within their limits,” and part of the coordinator’s job will be determining those limits and helping people stay within them, anticipating that much of the work undertaken will not involve “heavy equipment, or even equipment at all, but primarily involving garbage removal, creek cleanups and graffiti abatement.”
“It’s a great idea, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds,” Sher said.
“And just to be clear, the Volunteer Coordinator is not just (focused) on parks,” noted City Manager Sage Sangiacomo. “It is about putting a concerted effort forward to deal with cleanup and abatement activities throughout the entire city, including public right of ways, creeks and other areas.”
When asked how much money is available in the Solid Waste Abatement Fund that staff suggested using to pay for the new position, Davis said “the short answer for me is that we know that we bring in a little over $5,000 a month, and that it is scheduled to increase a little bit each year. So the budget that we have identified for the Volunteer Coordinator position, and the work that is done by that group, is less than $5,000 a month.
In his staff report prepared for the Jan. 15 meeting of the City Council, Davis writes that “litter, graffiti, and other forms of vandalism are negatively affecting our creeks, waterways, parks and public facilities. These issues harm the environment, diminish public spaces, and call for a coordinated effort to keep our communities clean and safe.”
And since “City Parks and Streets crews spend a considerable amount of time cleaning encampments, refuse, and graffiti from our parks, creeks, and public spaces (while occasionally getting assisted by) unorganized groups of volunteers,” Davis explains that the “Community Services team hopes to find a way to tap into the unorganized and relatively dormant volunteerism in our community, (proposing) to tap into this resource by using Solid Waste Abatement funds to hire a part-time, temporary Volunteer Coordinator to organize volunteers to improve the quality and cleanliness of our parks and public spaces.”
The staff report describes the Solid Waste Abatement Fund as being “created two years ago through a small charge added to each garbage bill for the purpose of funding public abatement activities to assist in keeping our community clean. The Public Works team has used the fund to hire contractors to perform occasional cleanup activities, though no formal plan or proposal for using these funds has been established. The fund has grown to a little over $100,000, with $65,000 currently allocated towards a one-time development of downtown garbage enclosures.”
If hired as proposed, Davis noted, “the Volunteer Coordinator will report to the Community Services Supervisor and work with the recreation, parks, and streets teams to identify high-priority cleanup projects that are suitable for volunteer efforts. The goal would be to have a minimum of two clean-up days per month. This position will be listed as a one-year temporary position. The goal is for the position to work between 24-30 hours per week. The salary range will be equivalent to other coordinator positions within the Community Services Department, which is currently $23.93-$29.80 per hour.”
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