To: Oliver Parks and Recreation Society – Public Meeting Tuesday July 22 at 7pm
From: Carol Sheridan, Manager of Parks and Recreation
Administration/Labour Management:
The first meeting of the new Occupational Health & Safety Committee will take place on Thursday July 24. This committee has representation from the office, facilities, pool, program and management and will meet regularly throughout the year to identify and reduce potential workplace hazards to maintain a safe and healthy workplace.
A request for quotes will be sent out this month to 2-3 local companies looking for logo design services for the Society. The current logo is outdated and the opportunity to rebrand out organization is here.
Facilities:
The Community Centre parking lot lines were painted June 22 by Alpine Painting services. The scheduled shutdown of the Oliver Pool to replace the motor in the Main Pool pump went smoothly and the pump is now functioning normally.
We have had a considerable increase in the amount of goose droppings at Rotary Park & Beach this year. Geese certainly continue to be a challenge in parks across the country. In 2012 the OPRS installed “Away with Geese” lighting that did significantly reduce the number of geese spending time on the sand and grass at Rotary Park. The lighting works on photocells, so when the sun starts coming up at 4:00am the lights stop working and this time between 4:00-8:OOam is where we see the highest activity of geese on land. Recent communications on the subject revealed that the Town funds a valley-wide goose egg-addling program. I was not aware of or contacted about such a program can confirm that egg-addling did not happen in the Rotary Park area in 2014. While we normally see some geese at the park this summer their eggs hatched successfully and they have had several babies, in fact there are 4 individual families now, and the number of geese spending time in the park has increased to around 30. This creates a whole lot of goose droppings – pounds and pounds of it. We have received complaints about the amount of goose droppings at the park and have responded with additional staff time down at the facility.
OPRS Parks staff is at Rotary Beach and Park every other morning at 7:00am raking the beach and either shoveling goose droppings from the grass or mowing to get it off that way. They do another sweep of the park and beach at mid-day. Due to the number of geese around the lake this year we hired an individual provide Goose Patrol services at the park 5 mornings a week from 4am-8am to keep the geese from coming near the park and beach area. This pilot project ran from July 7-15.
Detailed reports were provided and it was decided that the service would cease until the end of July and be reassessed at that time. I will work with the Town for other strategies and options such as firearms license etc. moving forward.
The new chiller is being delivered to the Oliver Arena on Thursday July 17 and the removal of the old chiller and installation of the new chiller to begin week of July 21.
The Big League Experience ball camps will start on July 27 at Oliver community Park and the company will once again utilize the arena facility as their home base for the summer.
We have had members of the public come forward with concerns about Lion’s Park related to the large number of people who are using the park during the past few weeks. Some of the concerns include dogs off leash, open alcohol and marijuana use, garbage, graffiti, parking spaces taken up by camper vans and the sheer number of people who sit right at the entrance of the park that intimidate some local park users from entering the park.
Community Park Diamond 1 and event park are being given lots of attention and are slowly recovering from the West Coast Amusements and Sunshine Festival. We continue to struggle with irrigation challenges in Community Park and Lion’s Park due to broken and outdated wiring and parts.
Community Development:
Thank you to all members of the Board for their support of the Sunshine Festival including the new Uncork the Sun event. The staff worked very hard to produce these events and we learned a lot and succeeded in provided quality entertainment and experiences for residents and visitors.
The “Music in the Park” series offered by the Oliver Community Arts Council continues each Thursday night until August 28. The first few evening markets were poorly attended however is gaining ground as the word gets out. While the response from market vendors outside of Oliver has been positive, we are hoping more local vendors and artists will participate.
The Oliver Healthy Living Coalition is undergoing a Food Security survey project with the help of an Interior Health student. The survey will provide a baseline for knowledge about our residents, their diet, their awareness of services and programs to support healthy eating and the barriers preventing people from eating healthy year round.
We have provided grant application letters of support to SOMHA and the Oliver Lawn Bowling club.