Use of Alternative Resources

About the Program

Category: Parks and Recreation (Best in Category)

Year: 2015

How to maintain the quality of a national award-winning system of almost four dozen county parks and historic sites in a time of drastic budget cuts and staff layoffs – that was the question faced by Gwinnett County Parks and Recreation. Our answer: find and deploy alternative resources. In this case, a combination of court-mandated community service workers, inmates from the county prison, and volunteers. This combination now provides an ongoing labor pool to complete a range of everyday tasks from menial to significant and allows us to use our financial resources to better advantage. Use of Inmates provides a significant pool of bulk labor to accomplish menial tasks with high rate of man power. These crews provide a significant level of general maintenance tasks such as trimming/edging, underbrush/invasive plant removal, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) clearing projects, spreading of playground mulch, and litter removal. Specialty crews provide semi-skilled tasks and include floor crews, tree removal services and minor drainage renovation. Use of Work Alternative Program (WAPs) provided weekend crews comprised of 15-30 people for trash pickup, janitorial and general park cleanup. Volunteer in Parks encourages the long tradition of volunteer services in Gwinnett County. Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, church groups, school clubs, business community and other groups or individuals give tirelessly of their volunteer time along with 29 volunteer athletic associations, Master Gardeners, the HOOKED Teen Volunteer Club and Gwinnett United In Drug Education (GUIDE).