What is a conservancy?

Amy Withers: staff roles if Dufferin Grove Park becomes a park conservancy

Amy is part of the CELOS group working on this park conservancy research. Amy worked as a part time recreation program staff at Dufferin Grove from 2003 until 2012 and was an active member of CUPE Local 79.

Plan:

Our plan is to maintain onsite unionized staff (unionized already by CUPE Local 79) at Dufferin Grove Park, integrated with a Program Manager hired by a Conservancy Board to run the park with excellent programming and rewarding work.

Goals:

We want to provide a dynamic example of how unions and large municipalities can provide excellent locally-grounded parks programming and rewarding work for union members. Currently workers at Dufferin do not have accurate job descriptions, and they lack autonomy and creativity at work.

The City of Toronto knows that they have a “quality” problem in their parks and rec programming. They have tried to fix it by outsourcing standardized training at a significant cost and by allowing new governance models to bloom across the City.

The opportunity for the City at Dufferin Park is to work with community members, workers, and their union for a new governance model that holds up three pillars: - excellent programming
- rewarding work, and\\ - engaged citizens.

What should workers be doing under the conservancy mandate?

Everything they currently do, and more, but better, happier and with more input from the community. The Conservancy’s aim at Dufferin Park is to provide the City an opportunity to try a hybrid model of authority that encourages excellence and innovation in programming and rewarding work.

What is the structure going to be?

As the Conservancy consults and moves from Draft to Proposal, CELOS will meet with the City and Local 79. CELOS will hire a Coordinator to manage the shaping of the proposal and the transition, while the City would continue to fund programming at Dufferin Park. The CELOS coordinator working on the proposal and the transition will be funded through a sole-source service contract by the City of Toronto.

Can union members be in supervisory positions?

Yes.
Dufferin Grove Park needs on-site managing but that role does not need to correspond with the power to hire or fire. Instead, Dufferin’s on-site coordinator must have the confidence and goodwill of both City Management and the Conservancy Board.

Why are you talking about workers, don’t volunteers run Dufferin Grove?

No.
Day to day unionized recreation staff at Dufferin Grove do almost everything. Here is an incomplete list of programs and tasks: food preparation, cash handling, monitor the wading pool and rink, run the skate rental, garden and coordinate volunteer gardeners, monitor campfires, help coordinate community events, do park upkeep work (picking garbage, moving benches, fixing fences) and of course on site daily coordinators manage workers and prioritize the tasks.

What is wrong at Dufferin Park now?

Silos of Authority: passing the buck
At Dufferin Park there are two sources of authority, the union and the employer. When Dufferin park staff want to innovate, the union and the City point fingers at each other to explain why something is impossible. For example, staff who kept track of the park finances for a decade can no longer do so.

Silos between on-site workers: not-my-job-ism
Currently at Dufferin Grove Park the workers you see in the park are part of numerous different City of Toronto divisions. There is no structural way of connecting Solid Waste staff who pick up the garbage with Parks workers who pick the litter, or with Recreation staff who work with programs or events that sometimes result in litter. City staff on different crews in the same park work side by side but rarely together!

Aren’t these problems facing other parks too?

Yes and No.
All parks have a unique character and potential. Dufferin Grove park has had years of incubating local programming ideas, many of which grew into City-run programs. But with management off-site and unengaged with the unusual pressures and requirements of work at Dufferin Park, the one-size-fits-all strategy fails.

The internet connects people, right?

Yes, and no.
We all experience the great and not-so-great aspects of the internet every minute of our lives. Using social media and volunteer apps to contact new neighbours and volunteers is a great tool. Also Dufferin Grove Park has some very niche programs that have always attracted interest from across Toronto, programs like campfires, bread baking in wood fired ovens, and cob building, to name a few.

But, person to person contact between onsite staff park users at the park is so important. At the playground we see parents of young kids, newcomers including refugees the homeless, youth-at-risk, drug dealers. Staff connect with these park users, introduce people to each other and help with neighbourhood resources.

Staff at Dufferin Grove Park formerly viewed connecting with these people as their job too. The results were individual and mixed. But we will pride ourselves on friendly, curious and capable staff who connect in person with all park users.

In the winter at 9.30pm on a weeknight there are often kids from age 7 or 8 upwards playing shinny endlessly. Rink staff have already checked in with them: did they get dinner? If not, how about a trade of skate shelving for a hot dog? Where are you going to sleep? Who is picking you up? Sit down to read your homework with me, then a checker game?

Example: A TWO-PART STORY:

(1) EASTER EGG HUNT WITHOUT A CONSERVANCY

A group of neighbours want to run a neighbourhood easter egg hunt at the park.

- They go to the park and ask what to do

- They are told to contact the Community Recreation Programmer (CRP), who takes 1 week to get back to them.

- They are told by the CRP to get a permit. The permit office wants insurance since the expected attendance is uncertain but above the 20-person cut off. A neighbour decides to pay the insurance and the event goes ahead.

- On the day of the easter egg hunt the washrooms are closed since it is between seasons. The group has no contact info except the permit office and the CRP, who don't work on weekends. The part-time site staff aren't scheduled until noon. The garbages are overflowing, the picnic tables are flipped on their sides and in the wrong places. The current homeless person who's staying in the park rain shelter near the permitted location of the easter egg hunt is upset and yells at them. No one knows him, and eventually the group shifts their whole set-up to avoid him.

- The litter hasn't been picked up in the gardens or the playground nearby, so hiding easter eggs seems kind of gross among sodden trash.

- The group can't find electricity for their sound system and when they do, they don't have a long enough extension cord. So they run over to mall and buy one. They forgot to pack freezer packs for milk to go with coffee (they rented urns). So they buy ice. They can't borrow folding tables since the staff aren't at work yet and might not let them anyway.

But all neighbourhood parties are fun, it just costs so much money, people hurt their backs moving heavy picnic tables and the organizer dropped one on their toe and who needs the aggravation!

So the group agrees never to do it again.

(2) THE STORY WHEN THERE'S A CONSERVANCY (local governance)

- Less "red tape" - lower or non-existent permit and insurance costs -- when an event is booked with on site staff they assure it is free, and neighbourhood-based.

- Park is clean: garbage bags are changed, trash has been picked up

- Lower costs: staff have helped the group with some event basics so they buy less. (The group can borrow a canopy, extension cords, coolers, coffee urns, ice packs)

- No back problems: picnic tables are moved using the park's dolly

- Friendly atmosphere: staff are on site during the whole time of the event including set-up, to trouble-shoot, get washrooms open

- Support for surprises: staff have a relationship with any local homeless person, they warn them ahead of time and remind them of the event. The person is more likely to welcome a chat with coffee and cookie, so the egg hunt space can stay in the playground.

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