Let’s Keep Our Park Beautiful Event

Louise Yellowman County Park is centrally located in Tuba City and offers great benefits related to health and wellness, education, cultural values and much more for the community. The park includes a basketball court, playground, ramada equipped with picnic tables, bathrooms, one-mile walking trail and a skate park. This park is highly used by the community and let’s keep our park beautiful by a clean-up day at the park! ​

Trash pick-up was conducted by volunteers that were supplied with a 5-gallon bucket, gloves and a trash picker tool. Majority of the trash findings was micro-trash such as small glass, cigarette buds, receipts and wrappers located around the park. Each bucket of trash was later condensed to fill about six trash bags. Overall, an estimate of 75 gallons of trash was picked up by volunteers during the event. ​

This park faces many challenges with graffitii tagging on a weekly basis and the county staff do there best with graffiti clean-up as soon as discovery. Majority of the graffitti taggings is revealed at the skate park area. These are the the before pictures of the recent taggings.
Before Pictures: April 05, 2019 ​

Graffitii Removal was handled by the Coconino County Maintenance staff. They focused on pressure washing the heavy taggings located at the skate bowl and at the restroom facility . Majority of the heavy taggings was spray painted onto the concrete surface at the skate bowl area. The pressure washer was able to remove majority of the spray painted areas. It took about 400 gallons of water to clean the markings with the pressure washer equipment. The pressure washer also helped remove dirt build up inside the skate bowl.
Photos taken during and after the event: May 04, 2019

The volunteers participated with fun STEM & Art related activities that consist of educating the youth with a hands-on project of building molecules with jelly beans and having the youth draw their vision of “re-imaging our park” through art. Majority of the volunteers showed interest with the molecule building structure. These were great activities to help connect with volunteers. ​

During the event, we were able to complete park user surveys forms. These surveys have 12 basic questions about the demographics, usage, safety and ways to improve the park. These surveys will provide additional data support with improving the park and recreational area in the future and will contribute to the database. ​

Overall, we had 13 volunteers that were involved with picking up micro-trash, graffiti removal, completing survey forms and participating with STEM & Art related activities. These volunteers I have met during the event are identified as park users, National Honor Society students, AmeriVISTA members and Coconino County Staff that come from the community and who are neighbors to the community. They all made a positive impact for our community park. With a great team of volunteers, a total of 48 hours of work was contributed at the event and we were able to pick up 75 gallons of trash and successfully remove graffiti.

A big thank you to the local business and community for the in-kind donations that valued up to $252.50 for the event. We appreciate your support and partnership in helping keep our park beautiful.

Written by Camille Keith.