The Portage Redevelopment Commission is planning to help the Park Department hire two new full-time maintenance workers. The new workers’ responsibilities would include helping maintain properties owned by the RDC but managed by the parks staff. Details are still being worked out, but Mayor Austin Bonta said at the March 20 RDC meeting that his “dirty math” figures it would cost less than $160,000 per year, depending on the cost of the employees’ health insurance. The city pays $11,000 for single employees’ insurance but up to $36,000 for employees with families. These would be union jobs, he noted. The RDC plans to work with the Park Board and City Council to eventually shift the cost of those employees to the park department rather than the RDC. “I could certainly see this being a two-year deal,” Bonta said, with the park department covering the cost in the third year. The park department is generating additional revenue now with a heavier emphasis on scheduling events, Park Superintendent Kelly Smith said. The need for additional park maintenance workers comes amid a shift of mowing from the public works folks to the parks staff, she said. “We currently mow about 50 acres, but with the shift we’ll be mowing close to 100,” she said. “We’re trying to get the street department more on the street and the park department more on the parks,” Bonta said. Since 2007, the park department has seen great improvements, including the addition of the open-air pavilion at the Portage lakefront, Founders Square and the Hannah’s Hope playground there, the national park connector area, former Little League ballfields and more, she said. But even with about twice as many parks, the department has half the maintenance staff it had back then. With the extra two employees, the crew would have seven employees, compared to 10 a decade ago. That should work, Smith and Bonta said, because the maintenance crews have good leadership and will be deployed effectively. “We’ve had playgrounds that had mulch out there sometimes for what felt like a year,” Bonta said. “We’re doing a whole lot more with a whole lot less compared to where we were nine years ago.” When they’re not mowing, the parks staff has plenty of work to do. “In the wintertime, we do a lot of deep cleaning. We strip floors, we do painting,” Smith said, plus there is a lot of set-up, teardown and cleaning for rentals. “There’s always something going on now.” That will keep the full-time workers busy all year, Smith said. “There is a desperate need for more help for you,” RDC member Ralph Mundt told her. “People looking to move to the area look to our schools, obviously, and our parks,” said nonvoting RDC member Wilma Vazquez, who is on the Portage Township School Board. Bonta said he has seen criticism on social media, suggestions that prisoners do some of the labor. “We don’t have a prison in Portage,” he said. Nor does the city have a jail. Prisoners are transported to the Porter County Jail in Valparaiso. “I’m much rather Kelly have a good maintenance staff that’s regular,” he said. Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune. ...read more read less