Butler County’s parks an award-winning labor of love
As of 2025, Butler County has one more reason to attract tourists: award-winning, quality county parks.
Butler County Parks and Recreation was honored as “Agency of the Year” by the Pennsylvania Recreation and Park Society at the society’s March Conference and Expo in Hershey for, in the agency’s words, “exemplary accomplishments in positioning parks and recreation as an essential public service with meaningful community impact.”
“To my knowledge, it’s the first time we’ve won Agency of the Year,” said Lance Welliver, director of Butler County Parks and Recreation. “This is a wonderful award that we were able to receive.”
It was a testament to the quality of the three parks under the purview of Butler County Parks and Recreation, including the 400-acre Alameda Park.
“We're a team here, and it takes all of us to make sure it's cleaned and properly maintained,” Welliver said. “We have multiple athletic fields. We have the water park. We have a dog park. We have a lot of amenities that we provide to the community that we do take care of and maintain at a high level.”
The award is also a high achievement for the agency, considering it consists of only six full-time staff members, including Welliver.
“We have an assistant director, we have a program manager, we have an administrative assistant and we have two full-time maintenance personnel,” Welliver said.
Although Alameda Park is open all year, it needs many extra hands to keep it running during the summer, when the water park and summer camp are open and the live event series is running. Welliver estimates the amount of season staff hired by department is more than 40.
“We hire seasonal maintenance staff,” Welliver said. “We hire camp counselors, lifeguards, concession workers and cashiers for the water park area.”
“Not all of its active space,” Welliver said. “We do have some space that we use for hiking and biking, and there’s some wooded areas that we don’t use for active recreation. A lot of it’s on hillsides and some areas we leave undeveloped, and people can just walk the trails and enjoy that aspect of it.”
Because Alameda Park is less active during the winter months, it makes for a good opportunity for department to perform needed maintenance and make capital improvements.
“We installed four new restrooms last fall, and we’re going to install a fifth one this spring,” Welliver said. “Last year, we also put in an ADA pedestrian walkway. It’s a paved surface that circles our volleyball court and our multi-surface field.”
Aside from Alameda Park, the parks department also looks after Diamond Park, a city block-sized park across from the county courthouse on Main Street. It also manages the baseball field at Butler County Community College during the months when the college is not in session. According to Welliver, the baseball field was built thanks largely to grant money from parks department.
“We run an adult softball league over there. We've run adult flag football there in the past,” Welliver said. “It’s a combination of rentals, space and programming that we use (the baseball field) for.”
Each year, Diamond Park plays host to the Butler Road Race, Sips in the City and the Butler AM Rotary’s Carved in Ice
The parks department does not manage Moraine State Park or Jennings Environmental Education Center, which are operated by the state. It also does not look after other parks that are operated at the city or township level, such as Preston Park and Father Marinaro Park.
Aside from managing county parks, the department also serves as a middleman for park improvement grant funds that are provided by the county itself or by Pennsylvania government agencies.
“We have a grant called the Local Park Renovation Program,” Welliver said. “There were 13 of those awarded at our (advisory board’s) last meeting. We provide 75% up to $10,000 for those grants.”
Of the 13 municipalities to benefit from the Local Park Renovation Grant this year, seven received the maximum amount of $7,500. One of those was Penn Township, which is putting its grant toward a new pavilion at Harcrest Park.
