At a reception at the Community Center last evening, Tuesday, Oct. 11, the Fountain Hills Community Services Department celebrated winning the 2022 Gold Medal as best in the nation from the National Recreation and Parks Association and the American Academy for Parks and Recreation Administration.

“We (wanted) to take time to recognize our Council, commissions, staff, partners and residents that make this distinction possible,” Deputy Town Manager/Community Services Director Rachael Goodwin said in a statement announcing the reception.

“We would not be successful without our partnerships,” Parks Superintendent Kevin Snipes said. “This is a ‘gold medal’ community.”

In talking to The Times last week Goodwin and Snipes were more than willing to bestow credit for the award on staff, volunteers and residents, as well as ongoing partnerships with vendors and organizations that make Community Services programs successful.

For the second year in a row Fountain Hills was a finalist for the award in Class V, the grouping of communities nationwide with populations under 30,000. They brought home the top award on the second time as a finalist – a significant achievement in itself.

The statement contained in the awards banquet program describes “Fountain Hills Community Services (as) a small but impressive team that operates with a culture of passion and commitment. We shine brightest when it comes to increasing community advocacy, earning the trust of our leadership and magnifying our limited fiscal resources. Encompassing five divisions with 17 full-time staff, we represent the broadest, most public facing department within the town. In a community of 24,000 we oversee five parks with more than 125-acres of active space, two trailheads within 822 acres of preserved open space, a 30,000 square-foot Community Center and one world famous fountain.”

The statement from the competition application encapsulates the reason behind the drive for excellence.

The recognition goes beyond the department and says much about the community as well.

“It is important to recognize staff and many partnerships,” Goodwin said. “It doesn’t work if everyone is not pulling in the same direction.”

After making it as a finalist for 2021, Goodwin said they received no help from the judges on where they needed improvement to move forward. She said staff came back to the drawing board and did their own postmortem, deciding where they needed to improve before applying again.

All of the departments within Community Services established their own goals for improvement and growth and set out to achieve those.

“This was done independently and internally,” Goodwin said. “There is a lot of pride at the staff level. No one is content to say we are done.”

Well, for the time being, they are sort of done. After winning the top honor, Fountain Hills cannot apply for the Gold Medal award again for five years. But during that time, they expect the fruits of their labor to show benefits.

“We are now recognized as a high-level organization to work with,” Goodwin said. “Partners will reach out because they know facilities are well maintained and quality.”

For two straight years vendors have reached out to offer equipment at no cost so they could have displays in Fountain Hills parks for conferences. In 2021 it was a mini pitch playing field at Desert Vista Park and this year a one-of-a-kind in the nation play apparatus was installed at the playground in Fountain Park.

Conference attendees were brought from Phoenix on a bus to see firsthand what Fountain Hills is doing in its parks.

The recognition that goes with this award is expected to boost marketing, branding, recruitment and tourism for Community Services.

“People are looking to us as the gold standard to follow,” Goodwin said.

“Going through this process has been great for the whole team, looking for a better way to get things done,” Snipes said.

“We have always known we have a great team and community here,” Goodwin said. “Now the rest of the country knows it.”