June 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 15

* Part of the popularity of bottle bills
has to do with their amazing fundraising potential: Millions of dollars' worth of refunds are donated
every year to schools, animal shelters and other nonprofit and community causes - including parks
and recreation programs!
2. Leaders in the glass industry are
desperate to correct the misperception that " there's no market
for recycled glass. " What they'd
like the public (and elected officials) to understand is that
" there's no practical market for
the relatively negligible quantities of badly contaminated,
broken, mixed-color glass collected in single-stream recycling
programs. " However, there is a
strong market (and energy need)
for reliably large supplies of correctly sorted cullet that can be
re-melted and formed into new
containers (or extruded into fiberglass), and this is why the
glass industry has been supporting deposit laws for at least the
last 15 years.
Thanks for the chance to clarify!
Comment from Professor Ron
McCarville, faculty of Applied
Health Sciences, University of Waterloo, Ontario; and Arnie Biondo, director, Centerville-Washington Park District, Ohio regarding Barbara Tulipane,
CAE, former NRPA president's Perspectives March 2019 column, " What
Happens When Pay-to-Play Replaces
Parks and Recreation Programs? " :
The March 2019 issue of Parks and
Recreation included a message from
NRPA President Barbara Tulipane.

It raised an important question regarding " increasing inequities in
youth sports.... " " Gulfs " between
those who can afford sports fees
and costs, and those who cannot
are deeply troubling, and we congratulate Barbara and NRPA for
highlighting the challenge faced by
many youth and providers of youth
programming. It's too easy to forget
about those who wish to take part
but are unable to find ways to do so.
We hope to join the discussion
Barbara and NRPA have initiated. We begin with a basic insight. Participation in any sport or
recreational activity requires the
successful negotiation of many
interlocking constraints. Any participation comes about only after participants have successfully
negotiated multiple variables like
time, skill, facilities, equipment,
money and companions.
Constraint negotiation might best
be compared to participants assembling a complex puzzle. They must
find ways to be at the right place at
the right time with the right people
and the right skills in order to take
part. We providers are at our best
when we help participants arrange
all the various pieces of the puzzle
to create a picture that works for
them. We excel when we help them
find the resources and provide the
flexibility they require to make
good things happen.
We hope that Barbara's message encourages debate among
recreation providers. How can
we continue to improve opportunities, especially for those who
lack resources? Given the complexity of constraint negotiation,

we encourage that the discussions
move beyond single variables. It is
tempting, for example, to focus on
simple solutions (fee levels have
been a popular topic in the past),
but that sort of simplistic perspective often creates more problems
than it solves. For example, will
removing fees for hockey registration offer meaningful aid to
children living in homeless shelters? Will a low fee help if the
child is unaware of the program,
cannot travel to the program, has
no friends in that program, or has
no role models to help make better
program-related choices?

Recreation service providers'
great challenge is dealing with
the complexity that participants
face.
Recreation service providers'
great challenge is dealing with
the complexity that participants
face. Focusing on single variables,
however tempting, may exacerbate
the problem, rather than solve it.
Let's explore together innovative
ways of helping participants find
all the resources they need to take
part. Youth programming is less
about providing programs and
more about helping youth navigate
demands, ranging from transportation to skill acquisition.
Thank you for highlighting this
very important issue. We hope that
NRPA will create a venue to explore this issue in-depth to generate
some answers and tools for park
and recreation agencies to use.

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Parks & Recreation

June 2019 - Parks & Recreation

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