City prepares to launch Adopt-a-Park program

City officials are preparing to launch an Adopt-a-Park program allowing citizens and organizations to help care for Sault Ste. Marie's 74 municipal parks.

"Community members will have the ability to adopt a park and the staff in public works will be providing the cleanup kits and everything that they need to do cleanups in the park," says Virginia McLeod, the city's manager of recreation and culture.

"Then, [city workers] will go on site to pick up the garbage. So that'll be a nice program that we're hoping to roll out within the next couple of months," McLeod told a meeting last week of the city's parks and recreation advisory committee.

"Currently we have a commemorative bench program. We're looking at developing a type of program where neighbours could get together and say: 'You know, we would like to add some spring toys or we'd like to add a teeter-totter or different components.'

"So you could also have that ability for, say, a parent group at Parkland to chip in and say, we'd like to contribute to this park or we're going to add this feature in so we'll be purchasing that feature.

"Something else that we're looking at rolling out is having that catalogue of different items that different school groups, parent groups or neighbourhoods can consider contributing to expand their park space," McLeod said.

"We want to do a lot of advertising around it because I think it's going to really help streamline things and simplify the process. We have a lot of community members that are interested in helping contribute. 

"I think it's going to make it a lot easier for them to participate and be able to take ownership of the park spaces."

Other park-related news:

• the city is preparing to order materials for the new splash pad at Manzo Park, which is expected to open in June. "We're ordering benches for around the area and the change structure similar to Bellevue is being made by our carpentry department right now," McLeod said. Landscaping will commence as weather permits this spring
• the Rosedale Park revitalization will be completed this spring with the laying of rubber surfacing. A grand opening is being planned in conjunction with Kiwanis.
• a water wheelchair and matting system is being shipped to Sault Ste. Marie to be installed at Pointe des Chenes beach. "We'll have those ready to go for the fall," McLeod said. "We're working with the accessibility advisory committee to come up with a sign-up process for the wheelchair, so that families will know that it's there and they're not making a trip all the way up to Pointe Des Chenes and not having access to that chair. Pathways are scheduled for the spring. They're going to start some work out there soon, hopefully in the next few weeks, to start prepping the pathway area"