MARYSVILLE — More than two dozen volunteers from the Marysville branch of Keller Williams and their associates teamed up to tackle Comeford Park as part of their fourth annual “RED Day” international day of service.
Eddie Quintero has been in real estate since 1991, but Thursday, May 10, marked his first RED Day — which stands for “Renew, Energize and Donate” — as a Keller Williams managing broker.
“The easiest part has been pulling weeds,” Quintero said. “The hardest has been doing the edge work between the grass and the pavement, as we’ve had a few malfunctions there,” he laughed. “None of this has been hard at all, though. It’s wonderful to give back to the community, and this is the perfect day for it.”
Miguel Lugan of LeaderOne Financial was also excited to be taking part in his first RED Day, even though he found aspects of the work challenging.
“These shrubs are prickly, so I get stuck by them every time I try to prune them,” Lugan laughed, before turning serious. “Like Keller Williams, LeaderOne Financial wants people to know that we care about the community that we’re part of.”
Realtor Sandy Chambers has been doing RED Days since they started, and has managed to rope her son Tony into roughly half of them. Tony took advantage of his summer break from college to join his mom in the flowerbeds in front of the Ken Baxter Community Center, where they weeded and tended to the plants.
“I’ve never seen anyone not have fun during RED Day,” Sandy Chambers said, before laughing, “Even children who don’t enjoy weeding at home like doing it. Everyone has a good attitude.”
Real estate agent Joseph Fisher explained that the day of cleaning gutters, painting picnic tables, tending to the park’s beauty bark and pressure-washing its playground structure cost close to $1,000 for supplies and other expenses related to the event, even with the volunteers bringing their own tools and Keller Williams receiving donations and discounts from Lowe’s, Maxwell’s, Costco and Walmart, among others.
“The biggest donation is time,” said Fisher, who credited Keller Williams employees with contributing a great deal to offsetting the expenses themselves, and thanked the other companies that Keller Williams does business with for supporting the event. “We plan for this all year, but the two months leading up to it are hectic with coordination and fundraising. I got about four hours of sleep last night,” he laughed.
City of Marysville Parks Maintenance Manager Mike Robinson remarked on the brisk pace of the volunteers’ work, and credited them with saving the city time and money through their efforts.
“With budget cutbacks, it’s harder to keep up with the fine-tuning work that we need to do,” said Robinson, who deemed Comeford Park an especially important site because it’s also the location of the Ken Baxter Community Center, and estimated that the day’s labors would yield at least $2,500 in value through volunteer hours alone. “This allows us to stay on task with major maintenance such as mowing. It puts the finishing touches on the ‘Clean Sweep’ cleanups we organized around town last month, as part of our downtown revitalization.”
