Many Johnston residents may not be aware the Johnston Parks and Recreation Department maintenance workers not only take care of the 26 acres of parks seven days a week, but also extend their skills, work and time to other areas of the town, including Johnston Town Hall, Johnston Police Station, Marian J. Mohr Library and five Johnston fire stations.

"The maintenance workers installed the tile in the mayor's office and also at the police station," explained maintenance Foreman Louis Prata.

Prata, who has served as foreman for the past 12 years and has been with the Johnston Parks and Recreation Department for the last 24 years, said his workers not only do maintenance at the Mohr Library, in the winter they plow, shovel and sand the walkways of the town fire stations.

"Ninety-five percent of the repairs are done in-house and we have our own maintenance equipment vehicles," Prata explained.

There are eight full-time maintenance workers and two part-time workers and their talents get a lot of daily use. Johnston Memorial Park alone consists of four ball parks, two batting cages and two concession stands, all of which need constant upkeep – cutting the grass, cleaning out the trash cans, watering and maintaining the restrooms and repairing the leaky dugout roof, plus maintenance of basketball, tennis and bocce courts.

As this past June went down as one of the wettest in history, it also brought more work for maintenance; workers had to manually scoop up the water from the fields with a bucket to get the fields ready for the baseball games.

In addition to Johnston Memorial Park, the workers also keep Woodlake Park's four ballparks, Sherman Field, Cricket Field, Headley Avenue playground and the Rainone gym in top condition.

The maintenance staff was recently handed yet another responsibility as the new soccer complex opened up this spring; they take care of the grass, concession stand and the rest of the complex.

In April, the crews turn their attention to the dead, instead of the living, helping to tend to the approximately 100 historical cemeteries located in Johnston. This year, however, wet weather forced them to reschedule the cleanup for November.

In the past, the state of Rhode Island has funded the clean-up but, because of cutbacks, the burden now falls on Johnston.

One thing is for sure – the maintenance workers never get bored. Last year they assisted with the new lights on the football field behind the Johnston high school, along with volunteers from Local 57 operating engineers in Johnston and Local 99 IBEW from Cranston.

"There is always someone here seven days a week, whether it is myself, or Executive Director Dan Mazzulla, or Assistant Director Matthew Lafazia … we have special requested functions to take care of," said Prata.