Delivering Hope, Health, And Happiness
Montrose Recreation District provides more than school lunches during Covid-19
By Mari Steinbach
Photos: Photos: Wade Ploussard / Montrose Recreation District
As parks and recreation professionals, many of us have a tendency to get into routines, move fluidly from season to season, and focus on the people we serve and the importance of what we do. Over the past several years, we have had the good fortune of thriving population booms, high demand for services, and mostly growing resources that enable participants to demand programs and facilities. Talk about a shock to our systems! When the global coronavirus pandemic slammed us in March, we were forced to shut down programs and facilities literally overnight. Of course, many departments struggled with what to do. We are used to making micro-adjustments to operations. Doing full-on shifts and pivots has had a remarkable impact and presented challenges among staff members, services, financial resources, and more.
The staff members of the Montrose Recreation District (MRD) in Montrose, Colo., were no different. This district—a separate governmental entity of about 500 square miles—serves approximately 44,000 residents on the Western Slope of Colorado, and owns and operates an 80,000-square-foot community recreation center, a 20,000-square-foot field house and outdoor pool, and three parks/athletic complexes. Just as in many agencies with large facilities, we are used to people streaming through our doors just because we opened them. Residents come in early and stay late to get their fun and fitness fixes; youth walk over after school to play, with parents often joining them after work; participants take swim lessons, have team practice, and enroll in aquatic fitness classes; free swims keep the pools splashing during open hours; drop-in sports play and leagues keep the action going from before the sun rises until late into the evenings.
So what do you do when the world turns everything we know about our work and play upside down? We dig in, look around, ask, “Who and what needs our help?”, and answer the call from wherever it comes. Fortunately, MRD is known as an agency that values and cultivates partnerships. Other people in the community know this and call on us to meet a variety of needs. For us, that call for help came in early March from the city of Montrose after the local school district announced—in light of school closures—they would provide school meals at only four school locations, for drive-through pick-up only. City staff members immediately recognized this meant many children would go without these important meals, so district staff jumped into action. The city reached out to see if we might help deliver meals to those families unable to drive to the pickup sites. Without hesitation, we responded, “Yes!” We have eager staff and dormant vehicles. We agree with the need. We want to support the community that supports us! “Roll out and let’s ride!”
The Battle Cry
Our staff members eagerly met the challenge and quickly assembled an organizing committee with Wade Ploussard, Adult Recreation Coordinator. The original plan was for city staff members to intake the names and addresses of the families, making an open Google Doc link on both the city’s and school district’s websites, so families could sign up. From there, city GIS staff would create a route to cover the addresses and provide the meal count at each home so MRD staff members could make the deliveries. We arranged to collect the required number of meals directly from the high school pick-up site, next door to the MRD Field House, which we used as the deployment hub. On the first day of delivery, March 19, we delivered to 19 homes, dropping off 48 meals.
By the following Monday, the requests had more than doubled. We realized we would need more than one route to ensure timely lunchtime delivery. Ploussard took over the mapping task from the city, using the Google Doc and Map, figuring out how to arrange the map and routes efficiently, and dividing the deliveries into three distinct routes. Our staff delivery team used three recreation buses—each with one driver and one runner. At first, the longest route took three hours to complete; when we ended deliveries for the summer, the time was down to 1.5 hours, even with more than 80 house stops per route, for a total of 253 meals delivered each day.
For a solid month of delivery, the number of meal requests increased steadily each day as more people learned of the program, yet the team fell into a good routine and was able to know the kids and families along the way. The rec district added complementary services, using its own resources. These included sport ball giveaways to families clearly in need, as well as craft activity kits assembled from miscellaneous supplies we had on hand. And, with additional community help, we gathered meal boxes from a local non-profit, and leveraged a business partnership with a local national sandwich franchise for Friday special-sandwich deliveries. Each day, Ploussard rallied the delivery crew with an enthusiastic “Route riders, roll OUT!”
Stories From The Field
We heard heartwarming stories from the field about how badly many in the community needed this extra service. Kids in quarantine shrieked with joy at having a new ball delivered; an entire family of girls plopped themselves on the front porch to eagerly dig into the activity kits, leaving lunches for Mom to figure out; a child behind the gate brought his teddy bear to drive its wagon so our crew could place the meals inside and he could then transport them to the house; a child hoped our staff members would stay and play; a grateful grandmother, who had gone without her own meals so there was food on the table for the children, now no longer had to. These and so many other stories fed our “why!” We connected with the community as individuals and as ambassadors of the MRD, and all that is good during a time that was dark and scary for many. We connected with people we didn’t know and with program participants in a necessary and immediate way, helping them endure with nutritious meals and enriching activities for their developing brains and bodies.
By the time the MRD ended deliveries on May 28, we had driven more than 6,000 miles, accounted for 700 staff hours, delivered nearly 10,500 meals, and incurred total expenses of more than $18,000 for 10 weeks of service. Since these costs were carefully accounted for and directly related to Covid-19, the MRD included them for local CARES Act funding, and will receive full reimbursement.
Staff members always felt fully supported by the MRD Board of Directors and by community members who thought the meal delivery initiative was perfectly suited to our mission and fundamental values of partnership and community. By “doing our part” to contribute to the greater good, we also provided an excellent distraction for our crew as they were beginning the reluctant shift to working remotely from home and wondered, “What do we do now?”
We knew. We didn’t hesitate. We DELIVERED!
Mari Steinbach is the Executive Director for the Montrose Recreation District in Montrose, Colo. Reach her at (970) 497-8569 or mari@montroserec.com.