Next Community Meeting: Monday, July 27th, 7 PM, South Austin Recreation Center
Brush pile removal in South Austin Neighborhood Park
By: Sev Coursen, Parks Committee Lead
Resolution of a recent maintenance issue in South Austin Neighborhood Park provides an example of how inaction by the City of Austin can sometimes be resolved by alternative means and creative collaboration.
The Spring It’s My Park Day on Saturday, March 7th was a very enjoyable and productive volunteer event. A majority of the 36 volunteers were Galindo neighborhood residents. Brush and downed limbs were gathered in three large piles, and many bags of trash were collected along the creek and throughout the park.
However, the three brush piles remained for months when the City failed to remove them. For previous Park Day events, I arranged for work crews from the city’s Community Courts program to remove collected brush. This time, the volume of the three piles of brush exceeded their limit. I then submitted several 311 requests for the removal; work orders were created, but the work was never completed. Weeks passed, and the piles were becoming an eyesore and a potential fire hazard.
An alternative solution was needed. I reached out to our friends at the Austin Parks Foundation (APF), the sponsor of the It’s My Park Day events. GENA adopted South Austin Neighborhood Park in 2019 with APF’s Adopt-a-Park program, and we have collaborated with APF on numerous park improvement projects.
APF was also unable to get any traction with their connections in various city departments. We decided to split the cost of the removal. I approved the use of $1000 from our Sponsored Fund Account with APF; the account they manage contains funding we have raised from grants and donations for park improvement projects. The piles were finally removed by a commercial crew on May 29th, twelve weeks after the Park Day event.
As a reminder, it’s easy to make donations to our Friends of South Austin Neighborhood Park fund to be used for future improvement projects in Galindo’s beloved park. A recent project provided the funding for the transportation and installation of the much-loved stone seating at the three entrances in the northeast corner of the park.