The maintenance contract for parks and gardens in Santa Cruz aims to make a qualitative, as well as quantitative, leap in terms of improving the city’s green areas. From the outset, the joint venture formed by FCC and Acciona has been awarded the contract for almost 26 million euros over three years, 60% more investment than the current contract, and a workforce of 208 workers, which means hiring 84 people plus. Furthermore, as part of this contract, one of the green lungs of Santa Cruz, the Garcia Sanabria Park, will have its own special permanent maintenance plan, with a team that will have a manager, eight official gardeners and a pruner with the European Tree Worker certification. The Palmetum will also have its own maintenance plan, with a manager and nine gardeners.
The details of the new contract were presented yesterday by the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, and the Councilor for Public Services, Carlos Tarife. As detailed by Bermúdez, “with the award of this contract, we have already updated all the major service contracts in the capital”. The councilor reviewed these services starting with cleaning, “which began in December 2020”, to continue with lighting, which for almost seven million a year has a provision that multiplies by four that of the previous one; road maintenance, with 12 million for four years, and pests, which grows 70% with an annual investment of 200,000 euros.
The mayor pointed out that this latest contract aims to considerably improve the care of the city’s green areas, which extend over 454 hectares, “so that there are 22 square meters per inhabitant, a figure higher than that recommended by the WHO, which is 15 square meters per inhabitant”, he explained. “As a whole -he continued- Santa Cruz has 27,500 trees and 19,000 palm trees”. Carlos Tarife offered the details of a contract that will last three years, with the possibility of extending it for another two. “The budget is increased, both for maintenance work, which goes from having a budget allocation of 5.2 million a year to 8.3, as well as investment, for which it is increased very substantially, from 12,000 euros in the last contract to 455,077 in which it comes into force”.
The hourly coverage of the service is also extended, increasing the number of personnel in the afternoon shift, for which there will be 25 operators from Monday to Friday and on weekends, in which 21 operators will work on Saturdays and five on Sundays. . Tarife pointed out that, currently, parks and gardens staff do not work on Sundays and are not required to clean the gardens in which they work, something that they will now have to do.
The new concessionaire will be in charge of making an initial analysis of the state of the city’s parks and gardens, as requested by Public Services. In addition, “the study on tree risks will become annual and not every two years, as it has been up to now”. The contract will also develop, among others, the Irrigation Plan for green areas and efficient water management.
Deductions if the quality does not meet what the contract says
This contract, like the Cleaning contract, establishes a series of quality criteria, which, if not met, will allow the Santa Cruz City Council to apply deductions on the amount to be paid to the concessionaire for the contract. Some quality indicators have been established that will be measured monthly and based on their results, if the established values are not reached, deductions will be applied in the monthly certification, so it will be like a kind of sanction if it is not met. with what is committed. To this would be added the breaches themselves, which will have their own sanctioning file.
