Like many maintenance departments, Durham’s Park Maintenance Unit in North Carolina is a route-driven organization with mowing, cleanup, landscaping, and facility maintenance teams all visiting parks on a specific schedule.
While crews regularly visit all of the parks, maintenance disciplines have different frequencies, so it never happens that all crews are at the same park at the same time. However, on June 15, all teams “converged” on Burton Park for a day-long maintenance exercise designed to dramatically improve the appearance of the park; this exercise was called the “Park Convergence.” Burton Park is a 10-acre park in a high-density residential area. For a variety of reasons, including high use, size, and location, the condition of many of the park’s amenities had been declining over the last several years.
In 2015, the parks department received new resources through a half-cent increase in the property tax dedicated to park maintenance. Since that time, the department has been exploring ways to improve performance measures and to overcome some of the long-term maintenance issues that have gone unresolved due to lack of resources. The rationale for the Park Convergence was that, while individual crews are effective at maintaining the appearance of the park, many crews working together are able to significantly improve the park’s appearance. For example, a cleanup crew might go to a shelter and blow out the debris, remove the trash, and maybe even make minor repairs. But the synergistic effect of multiple crews working at Burton Park resulted in a shelter that looks much better, leaving it in a condition that will be easier to maintain by individual crews moving forward.