New Team for council

The council will soon have its own ‘parks team’ working with communities in the Queenstown Lakes District.


“This is a concept that originated from the last council and I am pleased to say has been given the green light by the new council,” QLDC community services chairman Councillor Leigh Overton said.


With the contract that covers parks, reserves and street cleaning, due to expire in June, next year, the council was preparing to return the function of a horticulture and street cleaning team back ‘in-house’.


“There is one key aim and that is to improve the quality of the work by attracting, retaining and developing skilled staff for the job,” Councillor Overton said.


Along with our natural environment, our parks, gardens and town centres were the critical element in our community pride and how we appeared to others. The council’s intention in bringing the responsibility for care of these elements back into the council was to see a significant improvement in the appearance of these areas.


The other benefit of having a ‘parks team’ of council employed workers on the streets was the old fashioned ability to give direct feedback, he said.


“One of the things the new team will be doing is to have a really visible presence in our communities. We expect people to feedback information to members of the team who in turn will be able to give direct feedback to the council. It’s a really important interface that has been missing over the last few years,” Councillor Overton said.


It was time for the council and the community to take back ownership of its parks and reserves, he said.


The council would be recruiting 16 new staff for the team, including a dedicated street cleaner for Wanaka for the first time, two street cleaners for Queenstown and one person for Arrowtown, who would also cover any leave elsewhere, QLDC community services general manager Paul Wilson said.


“The rest of the team will be made up of horticultural staff based in Wanaka and Queenstown, with a team leader position. The whole crew would operate from depots in Queenstown and Wanaka,” Mr Wilson said.


The entire team would also be trained in rural fire fighting and civil defence.


“We anticipate that advanced recruitment will get underway early next year with the team commencing work from June, next year,” Mr Wilson said.


The council would look very favourably on recruiting people with proven experience in the new roles.