I feel like I’ve been in the dark. I’ve gotten at least 15 emails in the last few months on the county parks and open space plan, but didn’t realize the city is getting ready to pass theirs too. They asked for input last February, but I haven’t heard anything much beyond that until last night, and I’m not sure I liked what I heard.
There were two members of the public who showed up to the Long Range Planning Committee. Myself, and former staff member Si Widstrand and what Si had to say was unsettling at best. And when I tried to ask a follow up question, I didn’t get much more comfort. So, here’s the plan. Here’s the website. The committee didn’t have much to say except asking for some updates and saying that they needed time to review the information they received.
Here’s Si’s letter, a portion of it below.
1-The standards to guide future planning have changed.
The proposed plan changes the classification of parks, the service area standards, the desirable park size standards, the list of facilities desired or recommended for the (new) park classifications, and consequently changes the evaluation of deficiencies. I find the proposed new standards to be more vague and more flexible, making them more subject to political decision-making than to consistent city-wide standards. The draft POSP also presents these changes either as a fait accompli or (inaccurately) as already-adopted standards. Surely the Park Commission will want to consider the impact of these changes, and not consider them as adopted standards until they are adopted in a new POSP.I understand some good reasons for changing the classification and standards, but you need to clarify that these standards are NOT adopted by NRPA, which has been recommending that communities establish their own standards since at least 1997. These are guidelines used for standardized measurement, but not planning standards from NRPA The POSP should acknowledge this.
I understand that the amount of parkland should stay the same if we continue to follow the same acreage/population and dedication rates. However, the new standards open much greater flexibility in park distribution and development. In discussions with staff, they indicate they want to continue planning for parks very similar to what has been done in recent years. My concern is that I don’t see any planning standards that give good guidance to accomplish this. If the classification and planning standards are going to be so flexible, there needs to be more explanation of how they will be used. For example, how does a 2-acre neighborhood park with a half mile radius service area meet the same need as a 20-acre neighborhood park with the same service area? I think this could be resolved with more explanation of the standards and use of large vs. small neighborhood parks and large vs. small community parks. I think these changes will work, but they need more details and a transparent process.
2-The rest of the park system.
The draft POSP also omits any discussion or recommendations for Forestry, Olbrich Gardens, Mall Concourse, Warner Rec Center, and for many specific park functions and facilities which have been included in past plans. It refers planning for those sections to the sections themselves and to a staff-level process in the Mayor’s Office. Does the Park Commission not want to consider these areas? If planning guidance for these sections is not in the POSP, where will it be?
3 – Recommendations for action.
The third major change is that there are fewer actionable recommendations than past plans. There’s a lot of good policy discussion, but that’s not the same as an agenda for moving forward. Are there things that you want to emphasize for support, PR or grant applications?
The committee essentially decided they needed more time to think about Widstrand’s comments and they decided they should get comments to staff by January 9 for their January 23 meeting. They needed to go home, consider everything they heard and think about it. Plus, they were just handed the 150 page draft at the meeting, they had it electronically, but I’m not sure how much time they spent with it since it just came out, but this is the second draft and they had seen some of it before and their changes were reflected in it, along with comments from other departments. The didn’t really discuss the changes in standards, but from the comments of some of the members, I think they wanted to go home and compare to the 2005 plan to see what the differences were. It sounds like a huge task to wade through it all.
They discussed the disjointed planning and it was explained that the comprehensive plan (which is the 2005 Parks and Open Space Plan) is the plan that all other plans flow from, this the next specific plan which will be incorporated the next time that the comprehensive plan is adopted and then the more specific master plans for parks and other plans should be consistent with the two more general plans. There were several comments about making better recommendations about the public planning process and making it more transparent.
Regarding having more specific recommendations in the report – they said they specifically stayed away from any specific recommendations for any parks. Staff said they could incorporate some of them, she sayid they stayed abway from making recommendations to each park, she said they can be addressed through capital budgeting. They said they didn’t want it to be a politically driven plan so that those who were the loudest and most attentive end up with their recommendations in the plan. They welcome those comments, but if they put them in the plan it would never get approved.
Now, this confused me. When I was an alder staff opposed things I tried to put in the budget because it wasn’t in the plans. But now when I’m interested in getting things in the plans, they tell us to put it in the capital budget, which is even more political. So I had to ask how alders and neighbors who had ideas were supposed to get them implemented. I used the bad example of James Madison Park where even when I money into the budget, they didn’t use it for what we had asked for. This lead to some discussion about revising master plans for individual parks. And further questions about where you could find master plans for parks to know if they should be updated.
To me, the above process leaves it open to no planning at all. The last few capital budgets have totally ignored planning and essentially did park projects that alders wanted or where the neighborhoods had raised their own money, irregardless of planning.
Grant Frautchi also suggested that we could use the Parks Foundation to donate money to, because then the money would have to go to the items we donated for. I had to point out that the James Madison Park neighborhood, with many student and other renters (90%) are not the type of people who generally write checks for those types of items. He then admitted that the Foundation really wasn’t set up to help neighborhood that were less wealthy.
To me, it sort of irks me that Tenney Park can get a new shelter with a large donation from a wealthy donor, regardless of priorities or planning meanwhile James Madison Park which is more heavily used struggles to get improvements and the improvements made are made for weddings at Gates of Heaven or repairing the worst items (shoreline) which should have been routine upkeep, but ignoring the requested amenities. And, in order to use park facilities it costs $80 to use the Gates of Heaven or $110 to use the Tenney Shelter which is cost prohibitive for regular use by neighborhoods. But I digress.
They also discussed that this committee would take on the master planning for parks and figure out which parks had them and which ones needed them.
When I went to the meeting, I started wondering why I didn’t remember this process or the plan. It was because in 2005 they put it in the comprehensive plan and prior to that it was the late 90s and it was a separate plan. I walked away from the meeting wondering a whole lot more.
1. What were those changes that Widstrand was referring to in the policies? How do I figure out what policies changed and what impacts they will have?
2. Where are those master plans for parks? I can’t find them on the Parks website. How are neighborhoods supposed to find them and know if they need updating.
3. If people want to work on improvements to their parks, will they have to go through a master planning process for their park and how long will it take to get on the list to make that happen? How do they get on the radar screen to get changes looked at? Or do they have to just ask their alder to make an amendment at the council.
4. Are we just going to continue to let those with the money decide? Do you need a large benefactor to get your project done? Or do you need a strong/knowledgable alder to just put it in the budget regardless of the plans? What happens to lower income/less knowledgable neighborhoods in this process. I’m thinking of a recent conversation with that amenity less park in the Darbo neighborhood as an example.
In short, I feel a little silly after being an alder for 8 years and still having these questions. My experiences with the parks department were probably not so great given the problems I had with James Madison Park and competing visions for what should happen that got played out in the political arena instead of a planning process. I really didn’t have much luck with the less controversial Reynolds Park (and others) either tho. So, if we want to do it better, how does that happen? I still don’t seem to know. Or, perhaps I do, and it is, in the end, just a political process despite the plans.
