www.stma.org January 2015 | SportsTurf 29
face can be reduced or solved by creating partnerships between
local facilities or facilities within the same organization.
In the City of Peoria, AZ, we have developed several strategies
in coordinating the operations between our three sports facili-
ties: the Peoria Sports Complex, Rio Vista Community Park and
Pioneer Community Park. Each of our three facilities has select
specialty equipment, for example aerators, a verticutter, turf
vacuums and tractors, which are rotated between the locations
in order to maximize use of these seasonal equipment pieces.
For instance, each of our facilities has turf vacuums, but during
overseeding operations the Peoria Sports Complex uses all the
vacuums for this process.
A few times throughout the year we want to complete cultural
practices at the same time, which takes dedicated supervi-
sors and some internal customer service between them to
schedule the units appropriately. Aerification is one of those
cultural practices, but because aerification has several steps to
it, we are able to space the equipment pieces out, so that each
location can be working on one of those steps. Rotating and
scheduling of our specialty equipment is made easier by a city
contract with a towing company that was initiated and created
by our police department. Not all partnerships are with other
turf entities like athletic facilities or golf courses. Since the
police department relies heavily on towing services for traffic
operations, the towing company provides free towing of city
vehicles and equipment as part of the contract. Previously, as
an operation manager with the Brickman Group Sports Turf
Services (STS), in which I coordinated the maintenance efforts
between several Atlantic League stadiums, we would also do
the same sharing of specialty equipment between stadiums. In
this instance, we were able to find an independent flatbed tow
truck operator that would transport our equipment units in
exchange for tickets to games or previous year's merchandise.
Equipment sharing in York, PA with Brickman Group Sports
Turf Services.
