Your community members are looking forward to using your parks and recreational facilities again. And they are looking to you to ensure they can use them safely. Get tools for assessing your risks and safety resources as you plan to reopen some of your parks and recreational facilities.
In response to COVID-19 health guidance from DOH and Governor Inslee’s Safe Start Phased Approach for reopening Washington State shown below, utilize RMSA’s resources to keep your community safe.
Risk management challenges and resources
There are many challenges in each of the upcoming recovery phases for Washington Towns and Cities. Each of the Safe Start phases brings its own set of risk management concerns on many levels of local government, especially when applying social distancing policies to public spaces. This article focuses on the steps necessary to conduct a safe and responsible reopening parts of public parks and recreational facilities that were closed due to the pandemic.
View the Governor’s most recent recommendations and requirements for restarting outdoor activities.
The National Recreation and Parks Association has released guidance for Parks and Rec professionals, to deal with the COVID-19 threat in 2 phases: 1) Slowing the Spread and a 2) Path to Recovery, which states:
Park and recreation professionals should recognize that phased reopening plans will not be an immediate return to normal operations, rather, they should include additional mitigation measures to maintain states of low to no community transmission.”
Assessing your risks is key
We agree, we also recommend that RMSA members with parks and recreational facilities, should reference the NRPA’s risk assessment tool to assess the risks in reopening public community spaces, along with recreational facilities and programs. This will help you develop a plan to mitigate these risks during each of these recovery phases. The assessment tool asks specific questions, which lead to answers for the important overall questions that you need to be asking throughout this process:
- How are you implementing physical distancing in public spaces?
- What are you doing to limit the size of public gatherings?
- What is your current staff capacity/capability?
- What measures are you taking to protect staff and the public?
- What are your cleaning and disinfection practices?
To answer the last question, we recommend you take a look at the CDC’s reopening guidance for cleaning and disinfection, released on April 28. This cleaning and disinfection guidance is applicable to all sectors, including workplaces, schools, homes and public spaces. The CDC just released further guidance for administrators in parks and recreational facilities. You can look to MRSC for examples of park rules and policies, along with other questions that you should be asking about events and programs.
Please refer to RMSA’s risk management guides and risk management checklists for further guidance on RMSA member parks and recreational facilities.