The Parks and Recreation Committee met 05/08/2023. One of the items they took up was Resolution 4-R-23 which called for Ellen Kort Peace Park to participate in No Mow May.
This item was originally supposed to be taken up at the April 24 meeting, but due to a technical glitch it was not listed on the agenda correctly, so, in order to make sure they were adhering to public notice requirements, the committee opted to hold it until the meeting on May 10. This wait was not expected to detrimentally affect the implementation of the resolution because Ellen Kort Peace Park underwent work last year in which the walking path, lights, and park benches were installed. Due to that work, half of the park is currently dirt and needs to be seeded. The grass in the remainder of the park is being kept short by the resident geese.
The committee recognized that, given the state of the park this year, there was not much of a need for the resolution in its current form as written this year. Additionally, were the grass in Ellen Kort Peace Park to be left unmowed during Mays in future years, there would be staffing issues related to mowing and removing grass that had been allowed to grow 12+ inches long. The committee talked about the possibility of researching different types of grass, perhaps some that naturally did not grow as long, and looking into ways in which the space could be used to promote pollinator health outside of merely allowing the grass to grow long during the month of May.
They ended up voting to hold the resolution until the first scheduled meeting in June to allow time for Director of Parks, Recreation, and Facilities Dean Gazza and Alderperson Alex Schultz (District 9) to look further into options, discuss things with staff, and come back with some ideas for the park beyond having the grass grow long in May.
I’ve prepared a complete transcript of the discussion for download.
The discussion of the resolution started out with Director Gazza noting some of the considerations staff had brought up concerning leaving the grass unmowed in the park during the month of May.
- The city does not own the entire park. Half of the property is owned by WE Energies, and the city has an agreement with them that the city will mow that side of the park. In order to leave it unmowed, they would need to reach some kind of agreement with WE Energies.
- During a normal May when the park is not under construction, there would be the potential to get a significant amount of grass. Several years ago, in the interest of sustainability, the city moved to thatching mowers and away from baggers. Leaving the grass unmowed for the month would result in a lot of grass clippings which would probably take 3/4th of a day to remove at a time when the seasonal staff had not all come on board yet, which would be challenging.
- Per the city policy for managing turf, they spray the parks for weeds every other year. So, if the park was sprayed the year before, there may be very few flowers available for pollinators. [Certainly, when I walked past there the other day, I was struck by the lack of flowers.]
Alderperson Schultz thought that the impact on staff was a significant concern. He also felt that “No Mow May is evolving a little bit.” Rather than leaving the grass alone for 4 weeks, “we’re starting to retool the notion that that’s a good thing. Grasses get to a certain length and didn’t—they’re no longer helping the pollinators. So, if it’s two or three weeks into May and we’re 12 inches, and there’s no flowers, I would rather Park and Rec go in and take care of it, then let it go till it’s 18 inches tall and then a real a real challenge for staff to get in there, and thatch it down, and move it back into the soil.”
He was interested in possibly having staff evaluate the frequency they mowed the site and try to cut back on mowing and find a schedule where the grass could grow but didn’t become unmanageable. “I think that to me is a better outcome because it says that the city is trying to try and engage in the No Mow May philosophy, but we don’t really want to tie your hands.”
Alderperson Nate Wolff (District 12), the main sponsor of the resolution, liked what Alderperson Schultz had to say. He also noted that the resolution might need to be amended to clarify that it was not intended to last forever. “I’d like to say for the record, I didn’t see that happening once the park is actually developed. This would be more while it’s just a greenfield. We would just try to help pollinators while it’s sitting there, kind of a thing.”
Alderperson Sheri Hartzheim (District 13) wondered if having a different type of turf would allow city staff to now have to mow so often. She pointed to Alderperson Schultz’s yard which he had talked about several times as not growing very tall and only needing to be mowed a few times a year. Rather than passing the resolution as written, she much preferred to see if Ellen Kort Peace Park could be “a prototype park for how low maintenance turf can be maintained to both satisfy the citizens who will be using that park and to assist the pollinators.”
Alderperson Schultz agreed with the spirit of her sentiment. “The end goal I think, if we could get there, would be to have some park, whether it’s this park or another park, but some No Mow May or Slow Mow Summer or Slow Mow Spring, some iteration of this that the city takes some ownership of and kind of sees what they can do, and maybe that looks at different varieties of lawn seeding.”
Alderperson William Siebers (District 1) suggested holding the resolution to give time to create a more thought-out plan for future years, and Director Gazza reiterated that because of the current situation of the park, No Mow May was probably just going to happen on its own because the grass probably wasn’t going to get long enough to mow. Additionally, due to staff issues until the seasonal employees came on, they probably weren’t going to be working down in that park anyways.
Director Gazza liked the idea of looking at different seed types, and he could particularly see a different seed type working well in Ellen Kort Peace Park because it was expected to be a passive park that did not experience heavy activity such as people setting up volleyball nets, playing baseball, kickball, and frisbee, or running dogs.
He also raised the possibility of researching options at Lundgaard Park since it was a new park. He noted that doing research at existing parks was probably not feasible because they would have to till the existing grass under and start from scratch.
He mentioned that the city had been making significant strides in allowing areas to return to a more natural state, although they had not calculated the acres. Those areas were essentially not mowed at all during the year. The reason for doing that had been both for sustainability purposes as well as to decrease the amount of labor that staff needed to perform. [I think it would be kind of interesting if staff did a presentation to the committee on overall turf management within the city as well as the move to return some areas to a more natural state.]
Alderperson Chad Doran (District 15) questioned whether the resolution was even necessary at this point or if the things that they were discussing needed a resolution to be accomplished. He also pointed out that what they were talking about now fit well with what he had been sharing during previous discussions about Now Mow May that “letting grass grow isn’t as beneficial as we may have thought it was.”
Alderperson Siebers, however, felt that the resolution still had some value in that it could be used to provide some guarantees that Ellen Kort Peace Park would support pollinators and wildlife habitat.
Alderperson Schultz thought the resolution would be beneficial because it would be a way of publicly showing that the city taking these steps to engage in resiliency work. He was fine holding the resolution and was looking forward to what would arise from these further discussions and, in fact, preferred that over just having the park not mowed during the month of May.
The committee voted 3-0 to hold the resolution until the first scheduled meeting in June.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1092179&GUID=DAAF3C7B-45C5-4DAE-98AB-8D6763B0023B
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