September 2013 - Parks & Recreation - 48

P R I V AT E M O N E Y, P U B L I C P A R K S

budgets forced a 17-year cycle upon
them. Crews prefer to tend trees
on a 15- to 18-year cycle; they now
work a 50-year cycle.
They've designed new parks with
fewer fountains and fewer complicated artworks, as these require
much maintenance. And the department slashed hours at popular
community centers.
" It's not really a sustainable
course, " Friedli says. " Our recreation
staff are very passionate, and they are
working themselves into the ground.
But morale has suffered. "
Like Minneapolis and Chicago,
however, Seattle has an arrow in its
quiver that New York and other budget-strapped cities lack. Seattle Parks
and Recreation has a degree of autonomy, and officials can enact taxes
with the permission of voters. Seattle
residents twice voted to provide many

millions of dollars to expand and
build parklands in the last 15 years.
Now park officials are championing a ballot measure with a more
prosaic goal: to raise taxes to pay for
maintenance of all these parks.
" We don't want to rely on trusts
and conservancies, " Friedli says.
" We haven't gone [down] that road. "
A similar story is heard in Chicago. Park District officials describe
their department as a mini-city. Established in 1934, in the heart of
the Great Depression (paradoxically, this was a golden age for some
city parks, thanks to the Roosevelt
administration), the district oversees 580 parks and draws a revenue
stream from Soldier Field, home to
the NFL's Chicago Bears.
They have the ability to tax -
parks account for seven percent of
a Chicagoan's property tax liability.

The High Line, another privately-funded Manhattan park, is owned by the City of New
York and maintained by the Friends of the High Line, a community-based nonprofit.
Through a collaborative partnership, the former elevated rail line has become an innovative public space that attracts approximately 4 million visitors each year. However, its
private funding structure has raised some ethical concerns. In order to keep funding
coming in from corporate donors, the Friends group has been forced to support some
commercial developments nearby that encroach on already limited open space.

Parks & Recreation

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The Park District is about to go to the
bond market, seeking to float bonds
to pay for $50 million worth of building and improvements.
Perhaps as a result, Chicago does
a far better job of funding its parks
than New York City. The Park District spends in excess of $400 million a year on its 7,800-acre system,
plus $80 million in capital improvements. By comparison, New York
City oversees a vastly larger park
empire, in excess of 29,000 acres.
But it spends less than $340 million
per year, or about 0.5 percent of the
total city budget, on parks.
" We are constantly drawing up
master plans, " says Brendan Daley,
director of strategic planning for the
Chicago Park District. " In the event
that a benefactor steps up, we've already reached out to the community. "
OK, fine.
But what if, I ask him, a public-spirited plutocrat like Mr. Paulson stepped
forward in Chicago and offered $100
million, and he had his own very specific thoughts about where and how
that money should be invested? Daley
offers a snort of laughter.
" First we would jump up and down
and shout with joy, " he says, noting
that they work with conservancies.
Then he turns more serious: " The
answer is that it sort of depends. We
have a project to put artificial fields in
low- to moderate-income neighborhoods. Would he be willing to have
the money go to that? "
Chicago has proven inventive.
Of late, the Park District started a
rewards program, known as Park
Points. Sign your child up for a parks
program, catch a movie in the park,
and eventually you might accumulate
enough points to go to NBA All-Star
game or get free golf lessons.
The idea isn't to raise money so
much as to reinvigorate a mass constituency for Chicago parks.

September 2013 - Parks & Recreation

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