Our Mission

You may think of the Newburyport Parks Division as the people you see mowing at our larger parks. However, their responsibilities go far beyond that.

• As part of the Department of Public Services (DPS), the Parks Division is responsible for both maintenance and improvements at over 100 acres of parks and playgrounds, greenspace and hardscape alike.
• There are formal gardens at Atkinson Common, a skatepark at the Nock-Molin school, the entire length of the Clipper City Rail Trail, and athletic fields used by our public schools and private groups alike, ranging from Bradley Fuller Track, to the baseball / softball fields at Cashman Park, to the Cherry Hill soccer fields.
• Hardscapes they maintain include Inn Street and its playground, the bullnose at Market Square, Patrick Tracy Square, and vegetation at our Green Street public parking lot. 

The Parks Division does all this work with just 3.7 full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff members:  one Parks Manager, two other full-time employees, and seasonal summer staff. 

• Excluding the School Department, the City of Newburyport has 243 FTE employees; the 3.7 assigned to Parks make up less than 2% of all non-school city staff.
• For comparison's sake, DPS’s Highway Division has 39 FTE workers, and Newburyport’s Recreation & Youth Services Department has 10.8 FTE employees.

Specific, year-round tasks for these very few, hardworking Parks employees include: 

• All landscaping and snow-ice management
• Winterizing, reopening, and maintaining the Inn Street fountain and the lily ponds and fountain at Atkinson Common
• Regular, Certified Playground Safety maintenance at nine city playgrounds
• Several tasks are citywide beyond park properties, including arborist duties (Parks Manager acts as Tree Warden), pesticide application, on-call graffiti removal, and installation and maintenance of benches and memorial plaques 
• Animal control to augment Animal Control Officer shared with West Newbury
• Issuing permits for hourly, daily, and seasonal use of park facilities (https://newburyportma.myrec.com/info/facilities/default.aspx)
• Regular training per OSHA and Pesticide and International Society of Arboriculture

Also, the Parks Division works with the mayor’s office, Manager of Special Projects, to oversee all capital improvements to our parks and playgrounds, as directed by the Parks Commission and funded by the City Council. Some projects that the Parks Department completed in-house in 2024:

• Completing Fuller Field Renovation Project by creating two new, ADA-compliant bathrooms where none existed before
• At Upper Atkinson Common (High Street), oversight of the installation of steel doors at historic rock tower 
• At Bartlet Mall, reconstructed historic walkway from Auburn Street down to the Frog Pond
• At Woodman Park, installation of a fully accessible path to the playground
• At the Clipper City Rail Trail, expanded edible and butterfly gardens, continued to remove invasive tree species from Washington Street to the Merrimac River, with Friends of Newburyport Trees (FONT) installed and maintained new trees, installed COVID-19 pandemic memorial, supervised replacement of failed wooden fence sections, and assisted with the installation of Black History interpretive panels.

Where possible, Parks staff does construction and maintenance work in-house, to minimize cost.  The annual funding from the City’s General Fund is relatively low:

All operating expenses must be covered by the City’s “General Fund,” approved each fiscal year by the City Council.

• Unlike for the Water Department, Sewer Department, and Harbormaster, there is no separate "Enterprise Fund" for our parks.
• Unlike Newburyport’s Recreation & Youth Services Department, the Parks Division does not charge significant user fees to defray its costs.

For Fiscal Year 2025, total operating expenditure for the Parks Division will be $600,000; happily, this is a 41% increase from four years ago.

• However, $600,000 is still less than 1% of the $87 million in overall General Fund expenditures approved for fiscal year 2025. 
• Volunteer gardeners, contractors, and designers are welcome, and the Port Parks Alliance acts to connect volunteers to specific parks and playgrounds.

For capital improvements, our parks can benefit from municipal bonding, as well as government and private grants. The Port Parks Alliance can help lobby and apply for some grants.