BIDDEFORD — On a warm Saturday morning, about 10 University of New England students who just finished their first year of medical school spent their first day after the semester were weeding, raking and picking up trash at Biddeford’s Mechanics Park, located at the intersection of Main and Water streets. For the past several years, UNE has taken care of that park as part of the Biddeford Adopt a Park program.

“As people come to Biddeford this is the first place they see,” UNE medical student Sean Lombard said.”It’s important for us to represent Biddeford as positively as possible,” he said as to why he was involved in the program. “It’s important to have a nice, clean place for people to get together.”

The Adopt a Park program, coordinated by the downtown revitalization organization Heart of Biddeford which partners with the city, was started in 2012, HOB volunteer Holly Culloton said. She should know, as she was one of the founders of the program.

She said she helped start the program because “I learned our Public Works Department budget had been cut pretty significantly.” There were funds for services like mowing, she said, “but (the department) couldn’t do other things” such as maintenance, which is one of the chores of park adopters.

Because one of the goals of HOB is to make the downtown attractive and inviting, Culloton said she did some research on how other communities dealt with maintaining their parks when there was a lack of municipal government funds. When looking for a solution, “I discovered adopt a park was common across the country,” she said.

When the program was being discussed with City Council in January 2012, Guy Casavant, who was the Public Works director at the time but has since retired, said he favored the program, especially since funding for weeding and pruning had been removed from the budget.

Weed growth in the city’s parks and sidewalks wasn’t prevalent in 2011 he said, because money was budgeted to hire a contractor to spay herbicides to prevent weed growth during that summer.

However, Casavant said, the effects of the budget cut would be noticeable in summer 2012 throughout the city if nothing was done. There’s a “stark difference” in appearance, he said, between communities that weed and those that don’t.

In it’s seventh year, the program is still going strong.

UNE medical student Abigail Hatch who was weeding at Mechanics Park on Saturday said she enjoyed participating in the program because “Being at UNE, they teach you to give back. IF I can give back in anyway it’s great.

“When you’re in school it’s a good study break,” UNE medical student Jay Lavrich said. “It’s a good way to volunteer your time.”

There are about 14 parks included in the Adopt a Park program, most are in or near the downtown. The majority of parks have adopters but there are still a few openings for anyone who lives, works or just cares about making Biddeford more attractive.

To find out more about the Adopt a Park program, or to adopt a park, call Heart of Biddeford at 284-8529 or email [email protected]

— Associated Editor Dina Mendros can be contacted at 780-9014 or [email protected]