Inside Arvada

Park and Recreation Month with Steve Gustafson

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 33

Share episode

Send us a text

In honor of Park and Recreation Month in Arvada, Parks Manager Steve Gustafson joins us to share his lifelong passion for parks maintenance and the complexities of managing the city's vast outdoor spaces.

In this episode:

News and events: 

Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the official podcast of the City of Arvada. I'm Sean Starr, one of your hosts. July is Park and Recreation Month in Arvada, so our guest today is the City's Parks Manager, Steve Gufteson. Steve has been with the City since 2017, and he's been in his role as Park Manager since 2019. Prior to Arvada, he worked for the cities of Lakewood and Reitridge. He's been a parks worker really since he was. He could work since he was 16, as we'll find out in the interview, and as always, I'm joined by my co-host today, Katie Patterson. Hi, Katie.

Speaker 2:

Hey Sean. Yeah, it was great to have Steve on today, and one thing I really appreciated learning more about. I knew that we partnered closely with Apex Park and Recreation and we've had Hillary from Apex on before, but I didn't understand really the scope and scale at which we partner and coordinate with them, and that's something that I think confuses our residents sometimes, and so it was great to just hear more about that partnership and the history of the partnership over the last many decades.

Speaker 1:

Hi, Steve. Welcome to Inside Arvada. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

We're going to switch things up with our listeners. We're going to actually start with the lightning round. So it's a set of questions that we ask all our guests normally at the end of the interview, but we're going to switch it around and do it at the start, all right.

Speaker 3:

So, first off, what is your favorite thing about Arvada? Favorite thing about Arvada? Um, there's a lot of things to like about Arvada, so I don't know if I have a particular one thing that's my favorite. Um, I met my wife in Arvada right, and so, um, we got married in Arvada and we raised our kids in Arvada. So, um, all of our kids went to Arvada area schools. Our daughter graduated from Arvada High School, boys from Ralston Valley.

Speaker 3:

So, raising your family here you seese games, football games, or on the Ralston Creek Trail with cross-country meets, or at golf courses.

Speaker 3:

I grew up playing hockey, so the old North Teffco Ice Arena, and then our boys played, and so we have the Apex Center.

Speaker 3:

So I think to me it's just about as a whole, every place that I go within the city brings back something to do with family. So, whether it was when I was young or raising our family, so I think obviously the sports complexes mean a lot because we spent a lot of time there. But I think everywhere you just you kind of find something that brings back a memory and it's usually a happy memory. So I can't say there's one specific place, but there's a lot of special places, but I think a lot of people probably can find that throughout, like our trail system. I remember one time when we had a I had a grandpa day with my grandkids and we were walking through Ralston Valley Park and there was a brass band playing out of nowhere Funny Bones or something like that. It just happened to be playing on a Sunday morning in the middle of Austin Valley Park and I think you find different things like that throughout all of our park system and I think that's pretty cool.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great answers, certainly with all the important milestones that you've had here in the city. Next question is what was your first, best or last concert?

Speaker 3:

First, best and last Last concert was last Friday Red Rocks James Taylor All right, so my wife and I our whole family actually were huge James Taylor fans, so if we're in town, when he's in town, we go. So we were there Friday night and it was a great show Nice.

Speaker 1:

What brought you to Arvada? I think you're from the area, but not necessarily exactly in Arvada.

Speaker 3:

Right. So I grew up in Wheat Ridge and then worked for Lakewood for 22 years and then now I'm with the Arvada. I've been here with Arvada for eight years now but, like I said, I met my wife in Nevada and we raised our family here and um working for Lakewood. All that time I always kind of wanted to work and live in the same community. Um and I really we really um. You know, we planted our roots here in Nevada and we love our Vada. So when I had the opportunity to kind of um jump over here, I I couldn't resist and and I haven't looked back you know met some great people here. You know, I remember when I first started working I was like that's the job I want to do. I want to be a parks manager somewhere. I said that when I was 16. And the fact that I get to do that now, at my age, in the city that I live in, it's just amazing.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Speaking of when you were 16, what was your first job?

Speaker 3:

First job was working for the city of Wheat Ridge in park maintenance. Finished my sophomore year of high school, my first day of summer break, my older brother said what are you doing for a job? And I said you have an interview tomorrow with the city of Wheat Ridge. So, uh, when in the next day the Gary Wardle was their superintendent, he asked me four questions. I botched off four of them, couldn't answer any of them and he said can you start Monday? And I started that, that next Monday, working at the city of Wheat Ridge. And lo and behold, here I am today.

Speaker 1:

Been a parks lifer, parks, lifer, and then uh, finally, finally, what's your favorite project you've done with the city? I'm sure it's hard to pick Boy.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we've done some really neat things, not only in our parks, in our medians, in the shop that we built, moving from our old shop to the new shop.

Speaker 3:

But I have to say, probably the most rewarding project would be when we took over the athletic field programming from Apex. We found out late in 2021 in the fall, that we were going to be taking over the maintenance of the athletic complexes so like the infields and warning tracks and painting and doing all that stuff and we had to set up a business plan, we had to hire everybody and we had to start programming the fields all within about three to four months. Wow. So it was a huge lift that took a ton of help from other departments, including finance and IT and you name it and fleet, because we had to get vehicles and we were able to do all that in three months and start programming right away, and we didn't know what we didn't know, but we just kind of rolled with it and now I think we have some of the best athletic complexes in the state and so that's been a really, really rewarding project that continues today.

Speaker 1:

I knew it was an important transition. I didn't realize, maybe, how tight the timeline was making that happen.

Speaker 3:

It was a really, really quick turnaround. We were all kind of like, oh boy, but we were able to get it done. Like I said, we had a lot of help, not only from my team but from other departments, and it's gone really smooth.

Speaker 2:

That's a great testament to the hard work that you all do and a good segue to tell us a little bit more about yourself, and what exactly do you do here as a parks manager?

Speaker 3:

So I have been the parks manager here now for I think, six years, somewhere right in there. But we have 56 full-time employees that maintain our parks, 56 full-time employees that maintain our parks. And when I say maintain our parks, that also means medians and athletic complexes, and we have a cemetery that we maintain, we have the reservoir, we have an indoor and outdoor equestrian center. I mean, it's not just parks, right? We're a lot bigger than that. So we have 56 full-time employees In the summer. We're a lot bigger than that, so we have 56 full-time employees In the summer. We'll hire roughly, oh, about 60 to 70 seasonal employees, and then on top of that, we'll have about 60 to 70 volunteers out at the reservoir. So during the summer months we can have roughly 200 people that work for us.

Speaker 2:

Wow, yeah, I didn't realize you increased the numbers. I didn't know there were that many reservoir volunteers. I figured it was like 10 people. That's my misunderstanding. Yeah, that's amazing.

Speaker 3:

There's a lot of people there and then in the winter months, you know we're we're taking care of plowing all the the trails and the walks, and we have over 150 miles where the walks that we have to maintain as well. So we we got a lot going on year round.

Speaker 1:

I believe there's over a hundred park sites, so not just parks but, like you mentioned, the equestrian centers, and then, I think it's last I remember 4,200 acres of park trails and open space land throughout the city, so a lot to take care of.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, yeah, there is. There's, like you said, we're just over 4,200, and that's bluegrass and native grasses, and then, like I said, we do over 150 miles of trails that we maintain. So we definitely keep ourselves busy, that's for sure. And then, site-wise, yeah, we're over 200 sites, but that also includes our medians as well.

Speaker 1:

Which a lot of people might not realize is you see those medians and any time there sort of vegetation, whether you know trees or grasses, that's parks, that's maintaining those.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for the most part. There are some medians and probably more streetscape out there that are maintained by business property owners or HOAs. But for the most part, yeah, the medians, if they are landscaped that it's the parks department that's maintaining them.

Speaker 1:

And so we wanted to have you on now, because July is Park and Recreation Month. The City Council made it official with a proclamation on July 1st and we did that in partnership with Apex Park and Recreation District and so they're our partners but they're also separate from what we do here at the City. Can you explain to folks kind of the similarities and the differences between us City of Arvada Parks and Apex Park and Recreation District?

Speaker 3:

Sure. So when you think of Apex, the best way to explain that is they're more of like a recreation department. So when I think of Apex, I think of the Apex Center. They have two sheets of ice, they have a pool, basketball, water slide, water park. They have Seacrest, the Nevada Tennis Center, the new Nevada Aquatic Center. They run all of those facilities and then they program those facilities as well, whereas with parks you think of everything outside. So we have, like we said, over 200 sites. We have seven sports complexes. Everything that we do is basically geared towards the recreation part, but it's the outside part. Patridge Open Space is one of our most beautiful walks. It's got a really nice soft trail through it out on the western side of town. So areas like that too are also encompassed within our parks.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and there's a lot of overlap a lot of times too. You know like we'll own a facility and they'll operate out of it. Like you know, lake Arbor Pool and Recreation Center comes to mind because we're doing a master planning effort right now, but that's a facility the city owns. But then you know we're not the ones hiring lifeguards or programming it. Apex is the one that runs the facility on the day-to-day.

Speaker 3:

Right, and there's even certain areas within the city. If you look at the field house over by Stinger, we own that property, they own the building, so there are definitely overlaps and with us owning the field, so to speak, apex is a priority user group for us, so they will permit, or we will permit, a field to them and then they will run the program. So if you have a kid that's in T-ball, you will sign up through Apex, pay your fees to Apex and then Apex will get a hold of us and say, hey, we've got six T-ball teams that need two fields for this day. We need 60-foot bases or 40, two fields for this day. We need 60 foot bases or 40 foot bases, whatever they need. And then our team will go out and make sure those fields are ready, prepared for that. Those leagues, whether it's t-ball or adult softball, or they do flag football, they do you soccer, they do.

Speaker 1:

So they do a lot of things and and we permit the fields to them yeah, and that's um A good question that we didn't maybe have prepared, but we have what separate tiers of athletic facilities too that we run. So we've got like our tier ones, like our Stinger and Lutz, and those host big tournaments and big events, and then kind of down to maybe some of the smaller, like neighborhood-sized park fields that still get rented out for maybe like youth practices and stuff like that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, and typically they don't use. They'll use some of our tier two and tier threes. Yeah, and typically they don't use. They'll use some of our Tier 2 and Tier 3s. Mostly we have our priority user groups will use our Tier 1 fields, which are our bigger sports complexes Stinger, lutz, long Lake, those ones but they will use some of our Tier 2s, like Westwoods and stuff like that, for practices. And then we just built Serenity Ridge, which is a new park, and I know they want to start doing yoga there. That's not something we would necessarily program, but they do actually run programs within some of our other parks as well, gotcha.

Speaker 2:

And some of that overlap and the close relationship that you're talking about to this day really goes back to all the way from the North Jeffco Rec I don't know what it was called North.

Speaker 1:

Jeffco Park and Recreation. I think what it was.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and that's kind of transitioned from that model of them kind of maybe doing more of the park open park stuff to the city taking that on. Is that right?

Speaker 3:

Right, so back in the day, I want to say it was like in the mid-50s. I think it was North Jeffco, Park and Rec or Metro, whatever they called it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

That's kind of when they started up and then. So they were doing parks and they were doing recs and they were doing everything at that point. And then in the late 80s the city of Arvada kind of took over their park maintenance part of it and so they actually the employees from North Jefco at that time came over to the city of Arvada and both of their parks funds were combined to make one parks fund within the city of Arvada and all those employees came over and started working for the city itself. So there's definitely been some crossover back and forth started working for the city itself. So there's definitely been some crossover back and forth. And, like I said, at one time they programmed the fields and now we program the fields. At one time we took care of the splash pad at Ralston Central but they've said, hey, we're the aquatics experts, we should take that over. So now they are doing the splash pad at Ralston Central. So there's definitely some crossover between us and definitely some communication between the both of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, collaboration. I believe you have still a few employees on staff who were part of that transition back, you know, 20, 30 years ago.

Speaker 3:

We have. I think we're down to one left, I believe yeah.

Speaker 1:

John. Yeah, speaking of funding, where does your department get its funding from?

Speaker 3:

So we get basically about half of our funding from Jeffco Open Space. So back in 72, the voters passed a one-half of 1% sales tax on all goods purchased within Jefferson County and so the business owners collect that tax purchased within Jefferson County. And so the business owners collect that tax, they send it to Jeffco Open Space who in return send roughly 30% of that they have a calculation but it's roughly 30% of that back to us for our parks fund and our parks operation. This past year that was right around $7 million and then Jeffco OpenSpace keeps the rest of that and they use that for their operations, for obtaining new lands, for helping us obtain new properties as well and some of the bigger projects that go on between the both of us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I feel like that's unique compared to maybe some other departments that are more generally funded. And then we've obviously got our enterprise funds, like our water, our wastewater and our golf and restaurants. So half comes from Jeffco, open Space, sales tax and then the other half is general fund.

Speaker 3:

And then the other half, yeah, will come from general fund. And so that's when it gets down to funding and priorities throughout the city where our leadership team and council will decide that is a bigger priority Sorry, you don't get as much this year, or maybe parks is a priority and they'll get a little bit more but we get roughly 50% from Jeffco Open Space and then 50% from the general fund. And then Apex is funded differently because they're funded through property tax and then they're also funded through the services that they provide.

Speaker 1:

So if you pay for a t-ball league to get your kid in t-ball or you rent a pickleball court up at Sim Street, they also use that revenue to or they also get that revenue as well and you can go on the Jeffco property search and look, find your property if you're a homeowner, and you can see exactly how much you pay out to Apex and the schools and all those other districts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and funding is always a big part of the challenge of keeping up with all of our parks and open spaces and fields. What are maybe some of the other things that you all are facing now and challenges you're looking to address? Things that you all are facing now and challenges you're looking to address?

Speaker 3:

So some of the big things that are kind of on our some are here right now, so I shouldn't say on the horizon. One of the big things is the Emerald Ash Borer, which has been we definitely have it on the east side of town, but it's slowly moving west and it started out in the Midwest and and Michigan and has slowly moved this way. Um it, unless your trees are being treated, your ash trees, they they're going to die in a few years and that's just the the bottom line to it. So so we're treating um roughly 700 ash trees that that the city owns um currently, and that that runs us you know,000 to $50,000 a year. So that's an expense. And then when the trees die, we have to replace those trees as well. So that's always just kind of a revolving door in an added expense that we have.

Speaker 3:

The other thing is that, or another thing we see in the future, is the cost of water goes up, and even though we're part of the city, we do pay for water. So our water bill goes up too. I think last year we spent close to $800,000 on water. That's a big expense for us. So you'll see, we're slowly starting to move, not only because of environmental factors, but also because of budgeting. We're starting to turn more areas into native areas, which is better for the environment too, because we don't mow them as often. If we do mow them, we don't use nearly as many pesticides not that we use a lot to begin with, but those areas, if they're allowed to flourish, they reproduce on their own with seed, and so we don't have to do a lot of management with weed management because of that. So those are a couple things that are on the horizon.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and we did, I think, include it in the most recent community survey of how do folks feel about this conversion from that highly maintained turf grass to this native grass, and I think I remember correctly about two-thirds are in favor of it. So that's good to know as we continue to maybe expand into converting more areas of that turf grass into that native grass, for a lot of different reasons.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think another one people might be interested to know I wouldn't know this if I didn't work at the city is that a state law was passed recently that you all just did a really big overhaul to convert to electric maintenance equipment, and so can you share a little bit more about that?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's another one too. I'm glad you brought that up. So Resolution 29 is a state resolution that says any city using landscaped or landscape equipment which includes push mowers, weedies, chainsaws, anything that is under 10 horsepower from June through the end of August has to use battery operated. They cannot use gas powered equipment. So that has been this is our first year at it and so it's something new for us that most of our staff really enjoy using the battery-operated equipment because it is quieter and there's not the emissions you don't have that humming in your ear the whole time running a weedy. We are finding that, you know, the batteries don't last as long as we hoped they would last, so we're investing more money into batteries too. But we basically have to have two sets of landscape equipment ones we can use outside of that time and then um, the battery operated operated ones that we use um during the summer months, although we're using more just battery most of the time. But we've invested roughly $150,000 in the past two years just purchasing that equipment. Wow.

Speaker 1:

And then finally, uh, as we wrap up, we like to ask all our guests, uh, if there's any misinformation or misconceptions about the work that you do that you'd like to clear up. The time is now, Steve, to set the record straight.

Speaker 3:

You know, like I said a couple of things. That I think of is most people probably don't know that we have a water bill as well. That's probably news to them. So when water rates go up, they go up for us too. But I think that with rates going up, it makes people more aware of it that we need to do a better job of not using and consuming as much water. So that's something that we're trying to be better at, and we actually have a although Joe Kunze will tell you his computerized irrigation system is much smarter than ours.

Speaker 3:

His maybe gets an A-plus and ours gets an A. Ours is pretty smart too. So when it does rain, when we get, we have our set at roughly a 10th of an inch. When we hit a 10th of an inch, in different quadrants within the city we have weather stations that will inform our irrigation controllers not to water. If the wind hits a certain wind speed, it can tell them not to water as well. So we're doing as much as we can to conserve on water, and I know a lot of people think well, you're always watering at this time that's when I walk. Well, we have a very small window when we can water our parks and unfortunately it's typically at 11 o'clock at night until about six in the morning. So if you walk your dog somewhere between that time there might be water on. But but we don't do it just to bother people.

Speaker 1:

And then, um, bathrooms. I know is a big topic among our community and we have some port let's seasonally and we have some permanent bathrooms year round. But why can't we have them in all our parks, all a hundred parks throughout the whole city?

Speaker 3:

Um, it has to do with infrastructure, um, and we don't have the a the money to put water taps in um or a sewer connection, cause you have to have that in order to have bathrooms, and we just don't have the infrastructure to do that right now, and it is not it's not cheap to do that. You know, uh, um, if you're building a new park, uh, three inch water, um water meter can cost you up to a million dollars or more. So you know we pay that amount too. So the infrastructure is just not there to do it. We have it at our larger sports complexes. We do try to provide portlets. I know people don't enjoy using those all the time, but we at least do try to provide those for people when we can.

Speaker 1:

All right, Well, thanks for clearing that up and thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Thanks.

Speaker 3:

Steve, you bet. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

As a reminder, we love to hear from our listeners. You can stay in touch by texting us with the link at the top of each episode. You can also send us an email at podcastarvadaorg. We love to hear feedback from what our listeners enjoy and what they want to maybe see differently, or episode ideas and more and some news and events coming up.

Speaker 1:

Our Movies Around Town series continues Friday, july 18th with a free showing of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice at Michael Northey Park. The movie begins around dusk at about 8.45 pm. There'll be live music before that and we also have our People's Choice Movie Poll going on now so you can vote which movie you want to see in the final Movies Around Town event on August 29th at Clear Creek Valley Park. You can go to arvadacogov slash movies to view the entire schedule and to vote in the movie poll. As Steve Gustin mentioned, emerald ash borer is an evasive pest that is spreading throughout the city, and so we encourage all residents to take a look at the trees they have on city property, and if you have an ash tree, take action. Even if it's not infected with EAB, it is subject to the EAB, and so you need to mitigate that and treat your trees, and so we'll have a webpage, arvadacogov slash EAB where you can learn more about how to identify ash trees and what steps you can take if you have them on your property.

Speaker 2:

And they should be looking at the trees on their property. The city looks at the trees on our property. I think you said that wrong, oh absolutely.

Speaker 1:

We can't treat private property trees, we treat our own. We have a huge plan for that, but good point.

Speaker 2:

Yes, do the ones on your property.

Speaker 2:

And then also there's been a lot of reports lately of dirt bikes and other motorized vehicles on our trails and in parks and that goes against the city's municipal code. And so just a reminder to please only use non-motorized vehicles, non-motorized bikes and things on trails. And that does include that you can have class one and two. E-bikes are allowed on trails, but not class three because those go too fast. So for more information you can visit arvadagov slash trail dash etiquette. And then the city also offers each year a tax rebate for qualifying Arvada residents, and so there's more information about their residency and maximum income requirements for that online, and there's also an application and more information about how to contact the city if that's something that you or someone you know may qualify for. And so visit arvadacogov slash tax rebate for that information. And thanks again to our guest guest, steve Guftison today. It was great to have him on. Be sure to listen to our next episode with Judge Catherine Kurtz, and, as always, today's episode was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services.

Speaker 1:

And today's fun fact that was in 1974, Arvada residents passed a $7 million bond issue to build 32 neighborhood parks, some of which include Majestic View, Alice Suite, Danny, Kendrick East and West Davis Lane, and many others, and that amount of $7 million back then is equivalent to about $47 million today.

Speaker 2:

Whoa.