Mitchell Shire Council in Victoria’s central region is basking in the success and positive community feedback from their new Outdoor Blitz Programs.
For many large rural councils, the challenge for outdoor works crews can be implementing noticeable upgrades on parks and gardens while still adhering to the busy schedule of maintenance across an entire local government area.
The Mitchell Shire Council’s Blitz Programs were initiated as a way of bringing about effective, instant upgrades and makeovers of township parks and gardens, at the same time as raising the public profile of Council and promoting cooperation between outdoor works staff.
An Outdoor Blitz brings together Council’s Parks and Community Greening Teams (part of Council’s Engineering and Infrastructure Directorate) from the Northern, Central and Southern Depots, focusing all their efforts for a day on a specific project within one of the municipality’s townships.
Planning of a Blitz involves the Team from each depot specifying a priority park to be targeted in their area. Staff then design the park upgrades with input from community stakeholders to ensure adherence to any existing park strategies.
Once a design is agreed upon, preparatory work is carried out by the team that is responsible for the Blitz site, including removal of existing garden beds or plantings, removal of old park furniture, or clearing of stumps and soil preparation. Tree crews are also brought in to undertake any pruning and removal of dead material from established trees.
Once the preparation is complete, the Outdoor Blitz day is scheduled so that staff from all the depots are available to implement, install and completely makeover the target area in one day.
The response from the community has been overwhelmingly positive, which in turn boosts the morale of the Teams and has encouraged them to move on to and deliver bigger projects.
Following on from the almost instant success of the Outdoor Blitz Program, in terms of both the direct impact on parks and gardens and community support, the Mitchell Shire Council intends to implement the program in every township throughout the Shire.
