The council’s city operations department responsible for maintaining the streets, footpaths, buildings and public spaces said it was diverting resources away from park lands maintenance to cater for a surge in major events.

It comes after tens of thousands of football fans converged on the city for the AFL’s Gather Round, weeks after the Adelaide Fringe took over the eastern park lands for four weeks.

The last six months have also seen major events such as the Tour Down Under and Adelaide 500 make their first appearances since COVID, while the park lands have also been used by events such as Adelaide Writers’ Week and the Adelaide Motorsport Festival.

Fringe hubs have also been installed across other city green spaces, such as Victoria and Hindmarsh Square, while Elder Park and Pinky Flat were filled with footy fans over the weekend at a pop-up “footy festival”.

City presentation manager Noni Williams, who has oversight of horticulture, waste, and maintaining Adelaide’s 760 hectares of park lands, told councillors this week that preparing for major events was having an impact on her department’s resourcing.

“There has been an increase in the number of events across the city, we’re now seeing more events in the city than we did pre-COVID,” Williams said.

“I think last count it was about 38 per cent more.

“That does divert some of the resourcing that we would typically put to park lands work to cater for those events, whether it’s restoration, preparation. So it does certainly have an impact on the resourcing across the operations.”

The 38 per cent increase in events includes smaller community events, the committee later heard.

The eastern park lands in the wake of the Adelaide Fringe. Photo: Thomas Kelsall/InDaily

The city operations department is resourced with $35m and 223 full time equivalent (FTE) staff. Within that, 82 FTEs are within the horticulture and park lands maintenance division.

Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith said she was concerned the city operations program wasn’t resourced to cope with the increasing major events program.

“It seems to me we possibly don’t have the resources to keep the streets in such a good condition in terms of maintenance and the tree pruning and the verges,” she said at the meeting.

“It’s a tough job, and I think the staff are amazing – the tradies are unbelievable, and the quality of work they do is actually amazing.

“But it seems to me the challenge is with all the major events, and I think all your staff are spread rather thinly cleaning up after them but also restoration of damage in park lands, and helping set up for new year, helping break down for the Christmas tree.

“So it does seem that the more events we have, the more we expect your staff to do and they’re probably being pulled away from other maintenance jobs.”

Lomax-Smith, who was elected Lord Mayor in November, has already indicated that the council should enter a period of “budget repair” and search for more revenue.

Central Ward councillor Carmel Noon asked whether the impact of major events on park lands maintenance had been raised with the state government.

City shaping director Ilia Houridis said the council talked to the state government through a major events group, “where we highlight the impacts of increased programs and how we work across the city on an event by event basis”.

“We talk to… what those impacts are, what that means for operations, traffic, traffic management,” Houridis said.

“We have been very clear in those engagements about the resource and impact to the city.”