Bangor Parks and Rec to begin spring cleanup

BANGOR – The city’s Parks and Recreation will soon begin its annual spring cleanup of the Bangor’s nearly 30 public areas, beginning with repair of playground equipment and landscaping to address erosion and other winter damage, according to Maintenance Supervisor Dennis Crane.

“As soon as [the land] dries up, we’ll start going park to park picking up trash, debris and tree limbs,” said Crane, noting that it typically takes about a month or a month and a half to fully prepare the city’s parks for the summer.

The routine also includes rearranging and replacing picnic tables and distributing trash receptacles. Dog “de-waste” stations with disposal bags recently have become a part of the park scene and will be placed throughout recreational areas.

The city’s Parks Sponsorship Program, also known as “Adopt a Park,” has helped fund and prepare parks for the summer season. Nearly $10,000 is gathered from community businesses and organizations.

“It really is a tremendous help to the department and the city,” said Bangor Parks and Recreation Administrative Assistant Candi Devine.

Since the early 1990s, the money donated has helped defray the city’s cost of maintaining the parks and getting them ready for the season.

“A lot of the process has been dictated by the weather,” said Superintendent of Recreation Tracy Willette. In the past, there have been springs where a lot of the cleanup can be done early, and others where rain and weather have been obstacles in preparing the parks.

The same is true of mowing.

“The way things are going, [we’ll begin] the middle of next month,” Crane said.

Some parks have been known to take as little as a couple hours to prepare, while others have taken up to a couple days.

Hayford Park off Union Street, for example, features a softball field, swimming pools, tennis courts and playground, and takes longer to get ready than a smaller area.

New playground equipment on Newbury Street will be ready for June.

“If the weather improves in the next few weeks, we’ll see a lot of use,” said Willette. “We’re fortunate that here in Bangor people use the parks.”

Dana Bulba is a student at the University of Maine.