November 2019 - Parks & Recreation - 15

2019 NRPA Agency Performance Review: residents per park. According
to the review, the typical park and
recreation agency has one park per
2,181 residents, a figure not dissimilar to the former standards. The
report, however, shows significant
variation in this metric when the
size of the jurisdiction being served
by the agency is taken into consideration.
For example, jurisdictions of less
than 20,000 residents have a median of one park for every 1,231 residents, but agencies in towns serving
100,000 to 250,000 residents have a
park for every 3,132 people served.
These are big differences to the nationwide number and can have a
great impact on agencies. Another
example includes staffing at agencies serving a population of 50,000
to 99,999 residents. These agencies
can look at their peers and see that
a typical agency serving that population size has a staff of 60 fulltime equivalents (FTEs). Without
that supplementary breakdown,
the nationwide median of 38 FTEs
for all agencies would suggest (incorrectly) to key stakeholders that
the agency is overstaffed.
In addition, the benchmark data
within NRPA Park Metrics and the
NRPA Agency Performance Review
break down to the lower (25 percent) and upper (75 percent) quartiles. An agency serving 50,000-
99,999 residents might look at the
median staffing of 60 FTEs and
question its FTE count of 100.
Yet, when it sees that the upper
quartile for staffing is 122 FTEs, it
learns its agency is not necessarily
overstaffed. Conversely, an agency
serving the same number of residents with a staff of only 25 FTEs
can make a much stronger case for

the hiring of additional staff in an
effort to bring it up to that lower
quartile of 30 FTEs.

Doing Your Part
Each of these examples circle back
to the uniqueness of every agency,
the limitation of a single set of
" standards " and the need for peer
benchmarking data. These benchmarks, however, do not happen
without the participation of more
than 1,000 park and recreation
agencies across the nation. Entering your agency's data will take
only a few minutes but will help
to inform the decisions of your
colleagues across the industry. My
colleague, Daniel Espada, and
I are here to help you enter your
Park Metrics data and access the

many reporting tools found within
the platform.
So, don't continue to rely on
standards that have not been updated for more than two decades.
Take a closer look at the NRPA
Park Metrics and the NRPA Agency Performance Review to see how
your agency compares to its
peers. Blending the knowledge
of your agency's unique needs
with the starting point of custom
benchmarking data will allow
for more robust, informed decision-making. Your agency is not
one-size-fits-all, and the data you
use to make strategic decisions
should not be either.
Melissa May is NRPA's Sr. Research Manager
(mmay@nrpa.org).

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Parks & Recreation

November 2019 - Parks & Recreation

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