The argument for local management of local parks—such as the Joint Powers Authority & nonprofit management we advocate for the Parkway—is examined in this article from the Property & Environment Research Center.
An excerpt.
“Proponents of free market environmentalism do not usually invoke government as part of the solution to environmental problems. But when they do, free market environmentalists promote governance by the smallest entity possible. PERC, for example, advocates using land trusts or endowment boards to help manage public lands. Arguments for smaller government imply that local control will produce better environmental policy because representatives are closer to their constituents and, therefore, more responsive. It is also argued that competition between multiple smaller governments leads to better policy outcomes. When governments compete, constituents win.
“Is Local Always Better?
“There are typically three arguments given for local representation offering better solutions to environmental problems. First, local governments better represent local interests; and there might be shared values between local interests and the interests of free market environmentalists. Regarding the management of the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument, for example, many locals preferred less governmental supervision of the land and free market environmentalists were recommending an administrative trust arrangement. But this alignment of interests ought to be thought of as subject to change, or even accidental. Moreover, this representation of local interests might instead facilitate overexploitation.
“Consider the case of a fishing stock shared by two localities. Each local jurisdiction might, depending on the alignment of interests, have the incentive to overexploit at the expense of the other jurisdiction. Clearly this would be the case if both local governments represented fishers. Each would have the incentive to overfish—to snag the fish before the other locality could do so. Thus, with public good problems that cross political boundaries, the tragedy of the commons brought about by individual decisions can simply be replicated by the decisions of local governments. Consequently, this reasoning should be put aside as a convenient but ultimately unconvincing argument for local control.
“The second, and more compelling, argument for local control is that representation of local interests produces better environmental outcomes. Favorable environmental outcomes might come about because of superior local understanding and knowledge of an environmental situation. This is the reasoning invoked by arguments against “one-size-fits-all” command-and-control solutions to environmental problems. For example, residents might know where the spawning grounds of the fishery are and be able to encourage the local government to limit fishing in those grounds. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom argues that, for small common pool resources, this localized knowledge plays an important role in designing the appropriate institutions to govern and enforce the rules regarding the resource.
“Given the role of localized knowledge, it seems clear that a more appropriate argument than to simply prefer local over state control and state over national control is to match the size of the government to the size of the environmental problem. If the size of government was infinitely customizable to each issue, it should be no larger than the size of the problem. Governments of various sizes, however, are costly to set up, so choices must often be made from a discrete set of levels. With this consideration in mind, optimal jurisdiction size can actually be larger than the scope of the problem since it might be necessary to choose federal over state management for a regional problem.
“The third argument for local government as preferable to larger governments is that multiple jurisdictions can facilitate competition, even for public goods. As the Tiebout model explains, people can choose which jurisdiction they prefer by voting with their feet. This process encourages local governments to provide quality public goods. This is perhaps easiest to see in the market for houses near high-quality public schools, but it also seems to hold in the environmental arena. Economist and PERC fellow Spencer Banzhaf and his colleague Randall Walsh recently found that areas around large industrial facilities with high levels of pollution experienced population decline, while neighborhoods that cleaned up gained population. This movement of people, and potential voters, gives local governments the incentive to provide public goods.”
Showing posts with label JPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JPA. Show all posts
Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
ARPPS Letter Published in Bee Today
Donors can rescue parks
Re "Private donors' role in parks rises" (Capitol & California, Sept. 27): The nationwide trend of nonprofits helping parks is one that needs application in Sacramento, especially with our signature park, the American River Parkway.
We advocate forming a Joint Powers Authority of parkway- adjacent communities. The JPA would create a nonprofit organization for daily management and supplemental fundraising for the parkway.
It is a model with increasing resonance, especially in a time of severe public funding difficulty.
– David H. Lukenbill, senior policy director, American River Parkway Preservation Society
Re "Private donors' role in parks rises" (Capitol & California, Sept. 27): The nationwide trend of nonprofits helping parks is one that needs application in Sacramento, especially with our signature park, the American River Parkway.
We advocate forming a Joint Powers Authority of parkway- adjacent communities. The JPA would create a nonprofit organization for daily management and supplemental fundraising for the parkway.
It is a model with increasing resonance, especially in a time of severe public funding difficulty.
– David H. Lukenbill, senior policy director, American River Parkway Preservation Society
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Sacramento Zoo
As reported by the Sacramento Bee, it is one public facility that is enhancing its efforts rather than cutting back, and that is because it is managed by a nonprofit corporation under contract to the city, the arrangement similar to the one we are advocating for the American River Parkway.
An excerpt.
“The big animals take up a lot of space in our imaginations when we think about going to the zoo.
“But sometimes, it's the smaller animals that keep zoo visitors captivated.
“Saturday marked the grand opening of the new "Splash!" exhibit at the Sacramento Zoo, showcasing an enlarged and improved North American river otter habitat.
“As one of the zoo's oldest exhibits, the river otter den was in need of improvement, said the zoo's educational specialist, Chris Llewellyn.
"The only thing that comes from the original exhibit is the pool," Llewellyn said. "Everything else is new."
“Renovations to the river otter habitat took about three months to complete, starting in June, according to Llewellyn.
“Costing about $160,000, the project at the nonprofit zoo received significant donations from fundraisers, private donors and the companies working on the construction.
"There are so many people who have helped to make this project a reality," said Zoo Director Mary Healy, "and we are grateful to every one of them."
An excerpt.
“The big animals take up a lot of space in our imaginations when we think about going to the zoo.
“But sometimes, it's the smaller animals that keep zoo visitors captivated.
“Saturday marked the grand opening of the new "Splash!" exhibit at the Sacramento Zoo, showcasing an enlarged and improved North American river otter habitat.
“As one of the zoo's oldest exhibits, the river otter den was in need of improvement, said the zoo's educational specialist, Chris Llewellyn.
"The only thing that comes from the original exhibit is the pool," Llewellyn said. "Everything else is new."
“Renovations to the river otter habitat took about three months to complete, starting in June, according to Llewellyn.
“Costing about $160,000, the project at the nonprofit zoo received significant donations from fundraisers, private donors and the companies working on the construction.
"There are so many people who have helped to make this project a reality," said Zoo Director Mary Healy, "and we are grateful to every one of them."
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Saving Our Parks
As we struggle to save our parks from the ruin caused by a lack of effective management and limited public funding, the examples of other cities that have taken a new tact might be of some help, as reported by this article from City Journal.
An excerpt focusing on Central Park, a model ARPPS promotes for use by the Parkway.
“Central Park in spring may be the most glorious public space on Earth. Flowering dogwoods and lilacs scent the air as children, sprung from being cooped up all winter, pack the playgrounds. Bicyclists and runners swirl around the six-mile grand loop, battling through the steep hills of Harlem to take in the skyline views farther south. High-end food carts sell waffles and organic fare. It’s hard to believe that 30 years ago, tourists would stand on 59th Street staring north, afraid to venture into the park. New York City’s green spaces are “certainly at a modern high point,” says Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation (who started his career in 1979 as a park ranger and thus “worked in the parks system at its low point,” too).
“But perhaps the most amazing thing about Central Park is how little tax money goes into maintaining it. Though it is still ultimately the city’s responsibility, the park has been managed since the 1980s by the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy, and it relies on private donations for most of its budget. The marriage between the city and the Conservancy has been a fruitful one. Can this model, known as a public-private partnership, restore and invigorate all of New York’s green spaces, including neighborhood parks in less affluent areas? It’s an important question, not only as the city faces tough fiscal times but as urban planners increasingly view parks as tools of economic development and public health.
“New York has always been innovative with its green spaces. Looking north from a high floor in midtown, a visitor might think that city planners carved Central Park out of the skyscrapers. But the park was there first, opening in the 1850s. As architect and urbanist Witold Rybczynski once put it, Central Park was “out of scale with the needs of the time,” but Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed it and other city parks as well, was “looking ahead and seeing that the city’s going to grow around them and they’re really going to be necessary.” The same went for playgrounds. Seeing that children needed safe spaces for exercise and imagination in an era when child labor was still widespread, New York City opened the country’s first municipally built playground in Seward Park in 1903. The city now maintains more than 1,000 playgrounds.
“These parks and playgrounds were once generously staffed. Steven Cohen, now executive director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s and remembers that “every park of any size had a building with a ‘parkie’ in it to give out equipment” and function as “the eyes and ears of the place.” That changed during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, as the city went broke and cut its payroll. What happened next was a textbook case of the Broken Windows theory of crime: fewer “eyes and ears” and reduced park maintenance sent vandals, other criminals, and the homeless the message that no one would care if they populated the parks. At the same time, of course, New York was suffering a massive crime epidemic.
“People who lived in New York in the 1970s and early 1980s still remember how forbidding the parks were in those dark days. Douglas Blonsky, now head of the Central Park Conservancy and thus Central Park’s administrator, recalls that when he started working there in 1985, most of the benches were broken and most surfaces sported layers of graffiti. “The Great Lawn was a dust bowl,” he says, at least when the weather was dry; when it rained, seas of mud meant that “you could barely walk through the park for days.” Benepe recalls landmarks like Belvedere Castle as “burned-out shells.”
“Of course, Central Park wasn’t the total nightmare of popular imagination, with muggers around every corner. On sunny days, sunbathers used the meadows. David Beld, a competitive runner who moved to New York City in 1981 and now leads tours of Central Park, would jog around the loops. But he knew people whose bicycles had been stolen—and not in the usual way; rather, a thief would “knock a person off his bike and then steal the bike.” And this in a park that stretched through some of the country’s richest zip codes. Other parks, like those in Harlem and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx, fared even worse, becoming so crime-ridden and overgrown that sensible parents figured that their children were better off inside watching TV.
“But where “government had given up,” Benepe says, citizens stepped in. In 1980, landscape designer Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and others founded the Central Park Conservancy, whose original purpose was to raise money, stop the park’s decline, and restore several of its major landmarks. The city eventually gave the Conservancy the lion’s share of day-to-day control of the park. Because its workers weren’t organized into public-sector unions, the Conservancy had a great deal of freedom to institute private management practices—above all, emphasizing accountability. The park is now divided into 49 sections, with a master gardener responsible for the condition of each. About 85 percent of the Conservancy’s annual budget comes from private donations, mostly from people who live within a ten-minute walk of the park. “Obviously, it’s an incredible backyard, and look what it does to your real-estate values,” says Blonsky.”
An excerpt focusing on Central Park, a model ARPPS promotes for use by the Parkway.
“Central Park in spring may be the most glorious public space on Earth. Flowering dogwoods and lilacs scent the air as children, sprung from being cooped up all winter, pack the playgrounds. Bicyclists and runners swirl around the six-mile grand loop, battling through the steep hills of Harlem to take in the skyline views farther south. High-end food carts sell waffles and organic fare. It’s hard to believe that 30 years ago, tourists would stand on 59th Street staring north, afraid to venture into the park. New York City’s green spaces are “certainly at a modern high point,” says Adrian Benepe, commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation (who started his career in 1979 as a park ranger and thus “worked in the parks system at its low point,” too).
“But perhaps the most amazing thing about Central Park is how little tax money goes into maintaining it. Though it is still ultimately the city’s responsibility, the park has been managed since the 1980s by the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy, and it relies on private donations for most of its budget. The marriage between the city and the Conservancy has been a fruitful one. Can this model, known as a public-private partnership, restore and invigorate all of New York’s green spaces, including neighborhood parks in less affluent areas? It’s an important question, not only as the city faces tough fiscal times but as urban planners increasingly view parks as tools of economic development and public health.
“New York has always been innovative with its green spaces. Looking north from a high floor in midtown, a visitor might think that city planners carved Central Park out of the skyscrapers. But the park was there first, opening in the 1850s. As architect and urbanist Witold Rybczynski once put it, Central Park was “out of scale with the needs of the time,” but Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed it and other city parks as well, was “looking ahead and seeing that the city’s going to grow around them and they’re really going to be necessary.” The same went for playgrounds. Seeing that children needed safe spaces for exercise and imagination in an era when child labor was still widespread, New York City opened the country’s first municipally built playground in Seward Park in 1903. The city now maintains more than 1,000 playgrounds.
“These parks and playgrounds were once generously staffed. Steven Cohen, now executive director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, grew up in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s and remembers that “every park of any size had a building with a ‘parkie’ in it to give out equipment” and function as “the eyes and ears of the place.” That changed during the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, as the city went broke and cut its payroll. What happened next was a textbook case of the Broken Windows theory of crime: fewer “eyes and ears” and reduced park maintenance sent vandals, other criminals, and the homeless the message that no one would care if they populated the parks. At the same time, of course, New York was suffering a massive crime epidemic.
“People who lived in New York in the 1970s and early 1980s still remember how forbidding the parks were in those dark days. Douglas Blonsky, now head of the Central Park Conservancy and thus Central Park’s administrator, recalls that when he started working there in 1985, most of the benches were broken and most surfaces sported layers of graffiti. “The Great Lawn was a dust bowl,” he says, at least when the weather was dry; when it rained, seas of mud meant that “you could barely walk through the park for days.” Benepe recalls landmarks like Belvedere Castle as “burned-out shells.”
“Of course, Central Park wasn’t the total nightmare of popular imagination, with muggers around every corner. On sunny days, sunbathers used the meadows. David Beld, a competitive runner who moved to New York City in 1981 and now leads tours of Central Park, would jog around the loops. But he knew people whose bicycles had been stolen—and not in the usual way; rather, a thief would “knock a person off his bike and then steal the bike.” And this in a park that stretched through some of the country’s richest zip codes. Other parks, like those in Harlem and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx, fared even worse, becoming so crime-ridden and overgrown that sensible parents figured that their children were better off inside watching TV.
“But where “government had given up,” Benepe says, citizens stepped in. In 1980, landscape designer Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and others founded the Central Park Conservancy, whose original purpose was to raise money, stop the park’s decline, and restore several of its major landmarks. The city eventually gave the Conservancy the lion’s share of day-to-day control of the park. Because its workers weren’t organized into public-sector unions, the Conservancy had a great deal of freedom to institute private management practices—above all, emphasizing accountability. The park is now divided into 49 sections, with a master gardener responsible for the condition of each. About 85 percent of the Conservancy’s annual budget comes from private donations, mostly from people who live within a ten-minute walk of the park. “Obviously, it’s an incredible backyard, and look what it does to your real-estate values,” says Blonsky.”
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
Studying Tax Increase for Parks
The direction the County Supervisors took, to further study the issue of how to take care of our parks rather than immediately sign on to the tax increase strategy offered by the Grassroots Working Group—which our organization opposes—is appropriate.
The recent article in the Sacramento Bee opposing further study and encouraging the County Supervisors to immediately accede to the Grassroots Working Groups plan contains its own negation, in that generally, whenever a group stresses immediacy over further study, it’s because they suspect their plan won't stand up to that study, which it won't.
Taxpayers love their parks but realize that increasing taxes so essentially the same strategies can continue, is not just a bad idea, it’s a horrible idea.
The best solutions for the regional parks we’ve seen proposed are those offered by Doug Ose, and for the Parkway in particular we suggest our strategy.
An excerpt from the Bee article.
“Sacramento County's Board of Supervisors and county executive dealt another crushing blow to the operating budget of their Regional Parks system in June. What is the future of parks, trails and open space in this region? Is there a path to stable, secure funding and governance of Regional Parks?
“While city and county park agencies have faced extreme challenges during the four-plus years of the economic downturn, the only governance structure faring well is the special district. Because they receive a set percentage of property taxes, their operating budget fluctuates very little compared with the more than 50 percent cuts facing city and county park agencies. Could special district governance with a secure and stable funding source rescue Sacramento County Regional Parks?
“The groundwork for this shift has already been accomplished. For more than a year, the Grassroots Working Group, an organization of community leaders and park advocates have worked tirelessly and raised private funds to have the Trust for Public Land study options for funding and governance for Sacramento County's regional park system. Polling was also done as a companion to their study. All of this clearly pointed to the recommendation for a ballot measure to create a regional special district for parks and fund the district with a 0.1 of 1 percent sales tax increase….
“Unfortunately, the Board of Supervisors and the county executive want to spend another six months studying various options with community stakeholders, most of whom have been involved in the Grassroots Working Group effort over the past year. New options or "business models" do not exist if this community wants free, accessible, safe, protected, well-managed and commercial-free parks, trails and open space.”
The recent article in the Sacramento Bee opposing further study and encouraging the County Supervisors to immediately accede to the Grassroots Working Groups plan contains its own negation, in that generally, whenever a group stresses immediacy over further study, it’s because they suspect their plan won't stand up to that study, which it won't.
Taxpayers love their parks but realize that increasing taxes so essentially the same strategies can continue, is not just a bad idea, it’s a horrible idea.
The best solutions for the regional parks we’ve seen proposed are those offered by Doug Ose, and for the Parkway in particular we suggest our strategy.
An excerpt from the Bee article.
“Sacramento County's Board of Supervisors and county executive dealt another crushing blow to the operating budget of their Regional Parks system in June. What is the future of parks, trails and open space in this region? Is there a path to stable, secure funding and governance of Regional Parks?
“While city and county park agencies have faced extreme challenges during the four-plus years of the economic downturn, the only governance structure faring well is the special district. Because they receive a set percentage of property taxes, their operating budget fluctuates very little compared with the more than 50 percent cuts facing city and county park agencies. Could special district governance with a secure and stable funding source rescue Sacramento County Regional Parks?
“The groundwork for this shift has already been accomplished. For more than a year, the Grassroots Working Group, an organization of community leaders and park advocates have worked tirelessly and raised private funds to have the Trust for Public Land study options for funding and governance for Sacramento County's regional park system. Polling was also done as a companion to their study. All of this clearly pointed to the recommendation for a ballot measure to create a regional special district for parks and fund the district with a 0.1 of 1 percent sales tax increase….
“Unfortunately, the Board of Supervisors and the county executive want to spend another six months studying various options with community stakeholders, most of whom have been involved in the Grassroots Working Group effort over the past year. New options or "business models" do not exist if this community wants free, accessible, safe, protected, well-managed and commercial-free parks, trails and open space.”
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
Tax Increase for Parks is a Bad Idea
The Sacramento Bee continues to tout this as the solution to County Park’s problems, in the Sunday editorial and an article from Saturday.
Fortunately, the County Board of Supervisors has turned one park over to a forprofit—Gibson Ranch—and another facility over to a nonprofit—Effie Yeaw Nature Center—both of which were excellent strategic ideas.
We hope they will therefore look askew at asking residents to increase taxes during such horrible economic times without exploring more innovative strategies instead.
Fortunately, the County Board of Supervisors has turned one park over to a forprofit—Gibson Ranch—and another facility over to a nonprofit—Effie Yeaw Nature Center—both of which were excellent strategic ideas.
We hope they will therefore look askew at asking residents to increase taxes during such horrible economic times without exploring more innovative strategies instead.
Monday, June 06, 2011
Working Together
We agree with the concept expressed in this recent editorial from the Sacramento Bee, that local governments, working together, can resolve some of the current funding issues impacting valuable public works.
Though the editorial focused on animal shelters, it is also a valuable strategy for parks, and from our point of view, most easily adapted for the region’s signature park, the American River Parkway.
A Joint Powers Authority, which has been discussed by the County, to manage and help fund the Parkway—through philanthropy rather than tax increases—is an excellent idea, and more details can be found on our website's strategy page.
An excerpt from the editorial.
“Can Sacramento city and county leaders actually make good on a common-sense move to save money and offer better service?
“We're about to find out, and the answer will set an important precedent.
“Officials from the city, county and Sacramento SPCA plan to start detailed talks this week about the nonprofit taking over the city and county animal shelters.
“The potential payoff to all three could be significant.
“SPCA leaders are interested after a consultant told them that such a merger could "dramatically enhance" care for animals in the county. Fewer dogs, cats and other animals would be euthanized, and more would be adopted.
“Meanwhile, city and county officials are trying to escape from a downward spiral in their animal care agencies. Budget and staffing cuts during the recession have forced shorter hours and fewer services, and there's little reason to expect much improvement soon.
“After slashing $1 million and 10 positions since 2007-08, the city's proposed 2011-12 budget calls for trimming another $157,000 (to $2.9 million) and 1.5 positions (to 31.5). The county's proposed 2011-12 spending plan would keep animal care stable at $3.7 million and 29 positions, but that's down from $5.1 million and 33 positions two years ago.
“Consolidation wouldn't end government's duties altogether; the city and county would continue picking up stray and injured animals, for instance. Now, about 45,000 animals come into the three shelters combined each year.
“The county boasts a state-of-the-art, $23 million shelter that opened in October 2009, while the city shelter has a very nice cat adoption area.
“It's possible that one of the three shelters might be closed eventually, or turned into a holding facility while the others focus on adoptions.
“All those sorts of details need to be worked out. The transition would be complicated – far more so than the SPCA's contracts with Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Folsom and Rancho Cordova.”
Though the editorial focused on animal shelters, it is also a valuable strategy for parks, and from our point of view, most easily adapted for the region’s signature park, the American River Parkway.
A Joint Powers Authority, which has been discussed by the County, to manage and help fund the Parkway—through philanthropy rather than tax increases—is an excellent idea, and more details can be found on our website's strategy page.
An excerpt from the editorial.
“Can Sacramento city and county leaders actually make good on a common-sense move to save money and offer better service?
“We're about to find out, and the answer will set an important precedent.
“Officials from the city, county and Sacramento SPCA plan to start detailed talks this week about the nonprofit taking over the city and county animal shelters.
“The potential payoff to all three could be significant.
“SPCA leaders are interested after a consultant told them that such a merger could "dramatically enhance" care for animals in the county. Fewer dogs, cats and other animals would be euthanized, and more would be adopted.
“Meanwhile, city and county officials are trying to escape from a downward spiral in their animal care agencies. Budget and staffing cuts during the recession have forced shorter hours and fewer services, and there's little reason to expect much improvement soon.
“After slashing $1 million and 10 positions since 2007-08, the city's proposed 2011-12 budget calls for trimming another $157,000 (to $2.9 million) and 1.5 positions (to 31.5). The county's proposed 2011-12 spending plan would keep animal care stable at $3.7 million and 29 positions, but that's down from $5.1 million and 33 positions two years ago.
“Consolidation wouldn't end government's duties altogether; the city and county would continue picking up stray and injured animals, for instance. Now, about 45,000 animals come into the three shelters combined each year.
“The county boasts a state-of-the-art, $23 million shelter that opened in October 2009, while the city shelter has a very nice cat adoption area.
“It's possible that one of the three shelters might be closed eventually, or turned into a holding facility while the others focus on adoptions.
“All those sorts of details need to be worked out. The transition would be complicated – far more so than the SPCA's contracts with Citrus Heights, Elk Grove, Folsom and Rancho Cordova.”
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Parks Funding
This is a very difficult time for government funding for parks, but it is also a time of opportunity to remove the burden of funding from very limited government sources and move to the much more stable funding from philanthropy, especially for those signature parks best suited to be supported philanthropically.
Government is still to be involved of course, as signature parks, like the American River Parkway, are owned by the public, and a certain minimum-base level of funding should remain in place, but the major funding can come from a philanthropic community that realizes the value of the parks they use and will support them, as they already do elsewhere.
The model we always refer to is New York's Central Park, where the Central Park Conservancy raises 85% of needed funding under contact with the city of New York.
This model is being replicated in other parks around the country, including Pittsburgh.
For details on how we envision it working with the Parkway, visit our strategy page on our website, which provides details.
Government is still to be involved of course, as signature parks, like the American River Parkway, are owned by the public, and a certain minimum-base level of funding should remain in place, but the major funding can come from a philanthropic community that realizes the value of the parks they use and will support them, as they already do elsewhere.
The model we always refer to is New York's Central Park, where the Central Park Conservancy raises 85% of needed funding under contact with the city of New York.
This model is being replicated in other parks around the country, including Pittsburgh.
For details on how we envision it working with the Parkway, visit our strategy page on our website, which provides details.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
ARPPS Article
It is on Sacramento Press and addressed the local idea to raise taxes to provide more funding for parks .
An excerpt.
“According to a May 4th Sacramento Bee story, Sacramento County Supervisors are considering asking voters to raise the sales tax to pay for a regional park district.
“This is a terrible idea, especially during such trying economic times.
“A better idea would be to drop the proposal for the regional parks sales tax increase and consider bringing the largest regional park, the American River Parkway, under new management, with supplemental funding to be raised philanthropically.
“The American River Parkway is a signature park, the most important recreational area in our region, the most valuable natural resource in our community, and potentially one of the nicest urban/suburban parks in the nation.
“The Board of Supervisors could spearhead the formation of a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) comprised of representatives from Parkway adjacent governments and a representative of local nonprofit organizations with Parkway concerns.
“The JPA then creates a nonprofit organization to provide daily management and supplemental fundraising for the Parkway.
“The most successful model of a JPA governed river park is the San Dieguito River Valley Regional Open Space Park JPA created in 1989 by San Diego County and five cities.”
An excerpt.
“According to a May 4th Sacramento Bee story, Sacramento County Supervisors are considering asking voters to raise the sales tax to pay for a regional park district.
“This is a terrible idea, especially during such trying economic times.
“A better idea would be to drop the proposal for the regional parks sales tax increase and consider bringing the largest regional park, the American River Parkway, under new management, with supplemental funding to be raised philanthropically.
“The American River Parkway is a signature park, the most important recreational area in our region, the most valuable natural resource in our community, and potentially one of the nicest urban/suburban parks in the nation.
“The Board of Supervisors could spearhead the formation of a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) comprised of representatives from Parkway adjacent governments and a representative of local nonprofit organizations with Parkway concerns.
“The JPA then creates a nonprofit organization to provide daily management and supplemental fundraising for the Parkway.
“The most successful model of a JPA governed river park is the San Dieguito River Valley Regional Open Space Park JPA created in 1989 by San Diego County and five cities.”
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Parkway Parking
While agreeing that paying for automobile parking along the Parkway makes sense to the County in terms of their shortage of funding—for reasons as much connected with lack of creative management as with self-inflicted revenue shortages over the years—suggesting that those who walk or bike to the Parkway should be paying to use the Parkway, as this article in the Sacramento Bee does, is not something we agree with.
Paying for parking to get closer to where you want to go is time honored in our country, but merely visiting without using parking spaces is not (think charging pedestrians to enter downtown) and residents already pay taxes to support the parks.
An excerpt.
“Parking enforcement has been spotty lately along the American River Parkway – but that's about to change at two popular lots.
“Faced with a depleted budget, county parks officials have hired the Sacramento city code enforcement department to install pay parking machines this month in the Howe and Watt avenue parking lots.
“City code enforcement officers will patrol those lots to make sure parkway users pay the day-use parking fees. The city and county will divide ticket revenues.
“County officials say turning parking enforcement over to the city will allow the county's dwindling group of park rangers to spend more time patrolling, and possibly bring in more money for both local governments.
“The program at the Howe and Watt lots is expected to start on a test basis in two weeks, and be fully operational by June 1. The pay machines take cash and credit cards.
“If the machine system proves profitable, city and county officials say they may expand the system to parking lots in 16 county parks next year.
“The pay kiosks are sturdier versions of the green pay stations on downtown city streets. The city already has had success increasing parking revenue after installing the machines at Miller and Garcia Bend parks along the Sacramento River.”
Paying for parking to get closer to where you want to go is time honored in our country, but merely visiting without using parking spaces is not (think charging pedestrians to enter downtown) and residents already pay taxes to support the parks.
An excerpt.
“Parking enforcement has been spotty lately along the American River Parkway – but that's about to change at two popular lots.
“Faced with a depleted budget, county parks officials have hired the Sacramento city code enforcement department to install pay parking machines this month in the Howe and Watt avenue parking lots.
“City code enforcement officers will patrol those lots to make sure parkway users pay the day-use parking fees. The city and county will divide ticket revenues.
“County officials say turning parking enforcement over to the city will allow the county's dwindling group of park rangers to spend more time patrolling, and possibly bring in more money for both local governments.
“The program at the Howe and Watt lots is expected to start on a test basis in two weeks, and be fully operational by June 1. The pay machines take cash and credit cards.
“If the machine system proves profitable, city and county officials say they may expand the system to parking lots in 16 county parks next year.
“The pay kiosks are sturdier versions of the green pay stations on downtown city streets. The city already has had success increasing parking revenue after installing the machines at Miller and Garcia Bend parks along the Sacramento River.”
Saturday, May 07, 2011
Open Letter Sent to Supervisors
May 6, 2011
OPEN LETTER TO THE SACRAMENTO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
In relation to the May 4, 2011 story in the Sacramento Bee about your possibly considering asking voters to raise the sales tax to pay for a regional park district, we would offer—not a proposal for all of the regional parks—but a proposal for the largest, the American River Parkway.
We propose that you spearhead the formation of a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) comprised of the adjacent governments, and the JPA creates a new nonprofit organization to provide daily management and supplemental fundraising for the Parkway.
We have offered details on this strategy—including sample agreement language and JPA membership composition—on our website.
The Parkway is a signature park, with a national reputation, and, by conducting a nationwide search for the appropriate executive director of the nonprofit, you will be able to discover someone with the experience and talent to take the American River Parkway into the future with secure and dedicated funding.
This, of course, will eventually provide more available funding for the other parks in the regional parks department.
Sincerely,
Michael Rushford,President
Kristine Lea, Board Officer
David H. Lukenbill,Board Officer
Rebecca Garrison, Board Member
OPEN LETTER TO THE SACRAMENTO COUNTY BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
In relation to the May 4, 2011 story in the Sacramento Bee about your possibly considering asking voters to raise the sales tax to pay for a regional park district, we would offer—not a proposal for all of the regional parks—but a proposal for the largest, the American River Parkway.
We propose that you spearhead the formation of a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) comprised of the adjacent governments, and the JPA creates a new nonprofit organization to provide daily management and supplemental fundraising for the Parkway.
We have offered details on this strategy—including sample agreement language and JPA membership composition—on our website.
The Parkway is a signature park, with a national reputation, and, by conducting a nationwide search for the appropriate executive director of the nonprofit, you will be able to discover someone with the experience and talent to take the American River Parkway into the future with secure and dedicated funding.
This, of course, will eventually provide more available funding for the other parks in the regional parks department.
Sincerely,
Michael Rushford,President
Kristine Lea, Board Officer
David H. Lukenbill,Board Officer
Rebecca Garrison, Board Member
Monday, February 21, 2011
Can’t See the Forest for the Trees
The issue here, as virtually every paragraph in the Sacramento Bee story today and the associated comments make clear, is illegal camping by the homeless in the American River Parkway, but the Bee insists on entitling it “Breaking Sacramento's homeless cycle”, and that is part of the problem in resolving the issue of illegal camping in the Parkway.
Public governmental and media leadership cannot seem to realize how important it is to protect one of the most valuable public recreational areas in the country by strictly enforcing the laws against illegal camping.
That is why it is crucial, if we are to save this most beautiful and historical part of the American River Parkway, that it be managed by a nonprofit organization which will enforce the law.
The structure of this form of management, which retains public ownership of the Parkway, is outlined in our strategy posted to our website.
An excerpt from the Bee article.
“All last week, it was a cat and mouse game along the American River Parkway.
“Dozens of homeless men and women pitched colorful dome tents and claimed a right to live on land they dubbed Safe Ground, despite an ordinance that makes such encampments illegal.
“Homeowners and parkway users complained about trash, fires and drug abuse. Park rangers rousted the campers, but they resurfaced just a short distance away. Rangers moved in again, and the cycle continues, all in the glare of the media spotlight.
“From a 2009 feature on Oprah Winfrey's show to a cover story in the current issue of Harper's magazine, Sacramento has been cast as the face of the "new" homeless. But the issue has simmered for decades here, fueling anger, moral outrage and political debate.
“Should Sacramento get behind a Safe Ground where homeless people can live with basic services, free of police interference? If so, where should it be located? Does anyone have a better solution?
“The Bee asked eight people with personal stakes to offer their perspectives.
“Sacramento homeless: Ranger weary on constant rousting
“Steve Flannery, 58
“Sacramento County chief ranger
“Illegal campers have peppered the American River Parkway since the 1980s, when Sacramento County's chief ranger, Steve Flannery, estimates there were 60 people living in the four-mile downtown stretch.
“The rangers would cite the campers they encountered and send them on to their next nomadic destination.
"Keep them on the move," was the strategy, Flannery recalled. "The longer they stay in one place, the more environmental damage they do."
“But when the numbers began to ratchet up – with more incidents of cut branches, trampled vegetation and the scarred black rings of former campfires – two rangers took on the homeless full time beginning in 2002.
“There were days when the team would report not encountering a single camper between Discovery Park and Sacramento State, said Flannery.
“But a parched county budget halved the number of rangers from 22 in 2009 to 11 in 2010. The homeless detail was deemed gratuitous.
“Then came Safe Ground Sacramento, an organized group of homeless who turned a plot on the parkway into a campground housing as many as 150 people.
"We don't have an easy answer," said Flannery. "If we're going to have a mass eviction, there needs to be a place for them to go."
Public governmental and media leadership cannot seem to realize how important it is to protect one of the most valuable public recreational areas in the country by strictly enforcing the laws against illegal camping.
That is why it is crucial, if we are to save this most beautiful and historical part of the American River Parkway, that it be managed by a nonprofit organization which will enforce the law.
The structure of this form of management, which retains public ownership of the Parkway, is outlined in our strategy posted to our website.
An excerpt from the Bee article.
“All last week, it was a cat and mouse game along the American River Parkway.
“Dozens of homeless men and women pitched colorful dome tents and claimed a right to live on land they dubbed Safe Ground, despite an ordinance that makes such encampments illegal.
“Homeowners and parkway users complained about trash, fires and drug abuse. Park rangers rousted the campers, but they resurfaced just a short distance away. Rangers moved in again, and the cycle continues, all in the glare of the media spotlight.
“From a 2009 feature on Oprah Winfrey's show to a cover story in the current issue of Harper's magazine, Sacramento has been cast as the face of the "new" homeless. But the issue has simmered for decades here, fueling anger, moral outrage and political debate.
“Should Sacramento get behind a Safe Ground where homeless people can live with basic services, free of police interference? If so, where should it be located? Does anyone have a better solution?
“The Bee asked eight people with personal stakes to offer their perspectives.
“Sacramento homeless: Ranger weary on constant rousting
“Steve Flannery, 58
“Sacramento County chief ranger
“Illegal campers have peppered the American River Parkway since the 1980s, when Sacramento County's chief ranger, Steve Flannery, estimates there were 60 people living in the four-mile downtown stretch.
“The rangers would cite the campers they encountered and send them on to their next nomadic destination.
"Keep them on the move," was the strategy, Flannery recalled. "The longer they stay in one place, the more environmental damage they do."
“But when the numbers began to ratchet up – with more incidents of cut branches, trampled vegetation and the scarred black rings of former campfires – two rangers took on the homeless full time beginning in 2002.
“There were days when the team would report not encountering a single camper between Discovery Park and Sacramento State, said Flannery.
“But a parched county budget halved the number of rangers from 22 in 2009 to 11 in 2010. The homeless detail was deemed gratuitous.
“Then came Safe Ground Sacramento, an organized group of homeless who turned a plot on the parkway into a campground housing as many as 150 people.
"We don't have an easy answer," said Flannery. "If we're going to have a mass eviction, there needs to be a place for them to go."
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Parks Management Innovations
We have called for the American River Parkway to be managed by a nonprofit, and we support the Ose Proposal for privatizing Gibson Ranch.
This article from the California Chamber proposes these types of strategies and other innovative ideas for the struggling California State Parks.
An excerpt.
“February 7, 2011) The prospect of California State Park closures is again in the news as the State of California deals with its continuing budget crisis. There are, however, private alternatives that should be considered before closing the parks.
“Increased public funding of the parks just isn’t an option. The failure of Proposition 21 last November made that clear. By soundly defeating the proposition, voters declared their opposition to increasing taxes to maintain state parks as they are today. Countless surveys and actual park use demonstrate that while Californians love their state parks, they also want them managed within available resources.
“The State of California has exhausted the governmental solutions to the dilemma. And so, California State Parks have no alternatives other than to close parks or find non-governmental funding solutions to sustain them.
“In the past, privately funded solutions have been dismissed out of hand. Today, however, no solution that would keep our state park system viable should be discarded. So, let’s consider these alternatives:
“Private Sector Alternatives
“• Close Some State Parks. As a park professional, it is difficult for me to even mouth the obvious, but some parks don’t belong in the state park system. Most of these are among the smallest of our parks and lack any semblance of statewide historical, natural, cultural, recreational or economic significance. They often were added in response to political influence, when funding was more available or when state government was on an acquisition spree.
“California needs an independent task force (similar to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission) to assess which parks should be retained and which should be buttoned up and maintained until times are better.
“The task force might also recommend which parks are likely candidates for adoption by non-profits, local park districts or other sympathetic entities that are able to operate and maintain them. Potential savings from this assessment could be substantial.
“• Private Management. Many parks could be packaged on a regional basis for private-sector management, while others have sufficient real or potential revenues to be managed on their own. Private enterprise has shown it can accrue operating savings on an average of 30 percent better than government while managing park facilities comparably.
“Under this scenario, supervision and protection (public safety, natural resource protection, etc.) of the parks would remain under the direction of a California State Parks superintendent. Depending upon need and appropriateness, functions like maintenance, janitorial, fee collection, interpretation, and limited and contracted security could be assumed by private contractors. These functions represent the lion’s share of the overall costs to keep parks open.
“There is significant precedent for this type of arrangement across the country. The savings (both human and financial) could be substantial and could support and manage more effectively parks still directly operated by the California State Parks.”
This article from the California Chamber proposes these types of strategies and other innovative ideas for the struggling California State Parks.
An excerpt.
“February 7, 2011) The prospect of California State Park closures is again in the news as the State of California deals with its continuing budget crisis. There are, however, private alternatives that should be considered before closing the parks.
“Increased public funding of the parks just isn’t an option. The failure of Proposition 21 last November made that clear. By soundly defeating the proposition, voters declared their opposition to increasing taxes to maintain state parks as they are today. Countless surveys and actual park use demonstrate that while Californians love their state parks, they also want them managed within available resources.
“The State of California has exhausted the governmental solutions to the dilemma. And so, California State Parks have no alternatives other than to close parks or find non-governmental funding solutions to sustain them.
“In the past, privately funded solutions have been dismissed out of hand. Today, however, no solution that would keep our state park system viable should be discarded. So, let’s consider these alternatives:
“Private Sector Alternatives
“• Close Some State Parks. As a park professional, it is difficult for me to even mouth the obvious, but some parks don’t belong in the state park system. Most of these are among the smallest of our parks and lack any semblance of statewide historical, natural, cultural, recreational or economic significance. They often were added in response to political influence, when funding was more available or when state government was on an acquisition spree.
“California needs an independent task force (similar to the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission) to assess which parks should be retained and which should be buttoned up and maintained until times are better.
“The task force might also recommend which parks are likely candidates for adoption by non-profits, local park districts or other sympathetic entities that are able to operate and maintain them. Potential savings from this assessment could be substantial.
“• Private Management. Many parks could be packaged on a regional basis for private-sector management, while others have sufficient real or potential revenues to be managed on their own. Private enterprise has shown it can accrue operating savings on an average of 30 percent better than government while managing park facilities comparably.
“Under this scenario, supervision and protection (public safety, natural resource protection, etc.) of the parks would remain under the direction of a California State Parks superintendent. Depending upon need and appropriateness, functions like maintenance, janitorial, fee collection, interpretation, and limited and contracted security could be assumed by private contractors. These functions represent the lion’s share of the overall costs to keep parks open.
“There is significant precedent for this type of arrangement across the country. The savings (both human and financial) could be substantial and could support and manage more effectively parks still directly operated by the California State Parks.”
Monday, July 19, 2010
Changing Parks Management & Funding
The recent editorial in the Sacramento Bee comments on the recent deficit driven decisions to seek another way to manage some parks in the County Regional Parks division through contracts with nonprofit organizations.
This is a strategy we have been advocating for some time for the American River Parkway.
Due to its signature status among regional parks, with core elements—the bike trail and Lake Natoma—even being known internationally, it lends itself to the philanthropic fund raising crucial to survival under nonprofit management.
An excerpt.
“As Sacramento County moves to make drastic budget cuts across the board, the entire regional park system is threatened.
“Rangers are being cut by half, which means no routine patrols at many facilities, which will have to accept only "on-call" ranger services. Seasonal maintenance staff also are being cut by half, which means restrooms will be cleaned infrequently, and broken park amenities will be removed but not replaced or repaired.
“County funding has been zeroed out for the Effie Yeaw Nature Center, which has provided nature tours, Maidu Indian programs, camps, school field trips, wildlife counts, birding classes, art workshops, aquatic labs and live animal exhibits to thousands of people each year.
“The 345-acre Gibson Ranch equestrian facility, working ranch and demonstration farm – the northern anchor of the regional park system – will close after Labor Day. It has been open only Fridays through Sundays this summer. The horse boarding facility (with 60 boarders) will remain open, operated by the longtime concessionaire, currently operating on a less-than-ideal month-to-month agreement.
“This dire situation has created a new grass-roots effort to come up with options for taking the regional parks system out of county hands and placing it with some independent agency. But this will take some time to develop and will have to be decided by voters.
“In the meantime, necessity has spawned new ideas for public-private partnerships, where some park units will be publicly owned but privately managed by nonprofit organizations.”
This is a strategy we have been advocating for some time for the American River Parkway.
Due to its signature status among regional parks, with core elements—the bike trail and Lake Natoma—even being known internationally, it lends itself to the philanthropic fund raising crucial to survival under nonprofit management.
An excerpt.
“As Sacramento County moves to make drastic budget cuts across the board, the entire regional park system is threatened.
“Rangers are being cut by half, which means no routine patrols at many facilities, which will have to accept only "on-call" ranger services. Seasonal maintenance staff also are being cut by half, which means restrooms will be cleaned infrequently, and broken park amenities will be removed but not replaced or repaired.
“County funding has been zeroed out for the Effie Yeaw Nature Center, which has provided nature tours, Maidu Indian programs, camps, school field trips, wildlife counts, birding classes, art workshops, aquatic labs and live animal exhibits to thousands of people each year.
“The 345-acre Gibson Ranch equestrian facility, working ranch and demonstration farm – the northern anchor of the regional park system – will close after Labor Day. It has been open only Fridays through Sundays this summer. The horse boarding facility (with 60 boarders) will remain open, operated by the longtime concessionaire, currently operating on a less-than-ideal month-to-month agreement.
“This dire situation has created a new grass-roots effort to come up with options for taking the regional parks system out of county hands and placing it with some independent agency. But this will take some time to develop and will have to be decided by voters.
“In the meantime, necessity has spawned new ideas for public-private partnerships, where some park units will be publicly owned but privately managed by nonprofit organizations.”
Monday, July 12, 2010
Central Park Conservancy: The Back Story
The role that the Central Park Conservancy—the nonprofit organization that has been managing Central Park for some time—has played in our development of a strategy for seeing the American River Parkway be managed by a nonprofit, is well known by our members and those who have followed our organization.
Philanthropy Magazine has profiled the major philanthropist whose leadership, vision, and money, set in motion the renewing of Central Park the Conservancy was responsible for.
An excerpt.
“In 1969, legendary investor Richard Gilder moved his stockbrokerage firm’s offices from Wall Street to midtown Manhattan and started walking to work each day across Central Park. The native New Yorker had not realized until then how drastically a few years of bad government had ruined and degraded what he recalled as his idyllic childhood playground. Everywhere, he saw smashed streetlights, shattered benches, drug-dealing thugs, and spaced-out bums. He knew that the trash-choked weeds hid infected heroin needles, and the bushes, muggers. Hardly a blade of grass grew on the lawns, now pocked dustbowls that rain turned to mud.
“I was totally horrified,” Gilder says. “But I think horror is a tremendous thing to have on your side. It is so stark, it just drives you to action.” He launched a two-decade-long campaign to save the 843-acre park, which he capped in 1991 with a $17 million gift—over $27 million today—to restore the Great Lawn at the park’s heart to its Elysian green. That dramatic gesture of daring generosity made us demoralized New Yorkers believe for the first time that our crime-ridden, nearly bankrupt city could become the world’s capital once again. It restored our optimism and self-confidence, reminding us that human ingenuity can solve problems human folly has caused. Some philanthropic gifts, after all, can lift a whole community’s spirit….
“Seed Capital
“Central Park had been Gilder’s backyard ever since he was a boy. In the 1930s, his New Orleans–born mother, the daughter of Jews from Alsace-Lorraine who settled in Mississippi in the 1830s, walked him daily around the park in his stylish wicker perambulator. He played softball there most afternoons after school at P.S. 166 and then P.S. 6. On weekends he rowed on the lake or sledded down the hills. When he returned to his hometown in the mid-1950s as a young stockbroker—a profession he fell into by accident after school at Mount Hermon, Yale, and an unhappy few months at Yale Law—he played a ferocious game of touch football there with fellow Wall Streeters every single fall and winter Sunday for years, rain, shine, or snow.
“In 1968, Gilder left A. G. Becker to start his own stockbrokerage firm “after I had a little disagreement with the boss.” By then, Mayor John V. Lindsay had transformed Central Park into a case study in how not to run a city. Lindsay, the quintessential 1960s limousine liberal, had turned almost every foolish idea of the era into public policy. His Welfare Commissioner, Mitchell “Come-and-Get-It” Ginsberg, had more than doubled the welfare rolls in the name of social justice, deepening the city’s social pathology; his Parks Commissioner, Thomas Hoving, had invited huge crowds to trample Central Park’s lawns into hardpan at rock concerts and at “Hoving’s Happenings,” celebrations of the era’s supposedly free spirit.
“Lindsay’s belief that police should ignore supposedly “victimless” crimes like graffiti vandalism, drug dealing, public urination, and public drunkenness defaced and despoiled public spaces, none more so than Central Park. As we New Yorkers walked across that desert in those days—through the dust and stink of human and canine waste, past the muttering and disheveled deinstitutionalized madmen, under the hard, aggressive stares of the drug dealers—we knew it was not our park. It was theirs. And since such disorder breeds serious crime, we also knew, as the city’s murder rate skyrocketed up to six per day, it was as unsafe as it was unsightly.
“Unlike most New Yorkers, Gilder would not stand for this. “You don’t really realize how something becomes a part of you and you come to love it, until someone insults its dignity,” he says. So he went to see Hoving’s successor, August Heckscher, to see what he could do. Wall Street tycoon George Soros made a similar offer of help shortly afterward, Gilder recalls. “They told him there was another crackpot who’d been messing around; maybe you two guys should get together.” So the two investors decided to go long on Central Park. They sponsored a study showing how private money, a private Board of Guardians, and modern management could rescue the derelict park, and they set up the Central Park Community Fund to begin turning the study into reality.
“By then Abe Beame was mayor,” Gilder recalls dryly. “He hated Manhattan: he was from Brooklyn. He had no use for parks.” For four years, Gilder felt he was tilting at windmills. “We made very little progress, because the mayor was against us.” Beame had a revolving door for Parks Commissioners, with a new one every year, “so we’d just get used to one’s prejudices, and he was fired,” Gilder recounts. “But we weren’t doing any better; we had four successive executive directors. Every time they fired somebody, we fired somebody.” The fund bought a few trucks and some needed equipment for the park’s demoralized, inefficient union workforce, but its main accomplishment was merely to hang in there. “Here’s what I learned from this,” Gilder says: “If you have a good idea, it’ll build, no matter how you screw it up.”
“When Edward Koch took over City Hall in 1978, “the sun burst through,” Gilder says. The new mayor’s Parks Commissioner, Gordon Davis, invented the position of Central Park Administrator for a dynamic urbanist, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. Rogers was running what she calls a “teeny, peanut” nonprofit, the Central Park Task Force, that she had started as a youth summer-jobs program in 1975. The entrepreneurial Gilder did what entrepreneurs do: he recognized talent, backed it, and egged it on. His community fund merged with her task force to form the Central Park Conservancy, of which Gilder was a founding trustee. “He was an investor, he would say,” recalls Rogers, “and he was investing in, you know, me—and the belief that this could be done.”
“The Central Park Conservancy laid out a master plan for managing and restoring the park, and set about gradually executing it, zone by zone, project by project, as it could raise money. Harlem Meer, on the park’s north edge, turned from a fetid, garbage-choked cesspool back into a crystalline pond, its burned-out boathouse resurrected into a steeply gabled, cupola-crowned romantic confection in pink and green, looking like it had been there since Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park just before the Civil War.
“The Central Park Conservancy laid out a master plan for managing and restoring the park, and set about gradually executing it, zone by zone, project by project, as it could raise money. Harlem Meer, on the park’s north edge, turned from a fetid, garbage-choked cesspool back into a crystalline pond, its burned-out boathouse resurrected into a steeply gabled, cupola-crowned romantic confection in pink and green, looking like it had been there since Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park just before the Civil War.
“Restorers healed the broken, graffiti-smeared sandstone and crumbled bricks of Bethesda Terrace, where wayward teens had congregated nightly for a decade to smoke dope and misbehave, and transformed it back into New York’s most meltingly beautiful spot. Backed by brightly colored rowboats gliding serenely on the willow-bordered lake, the bronze angel stretching her arm over the great, repaired Victorian fountain seemed as miraculous to us New Yorkers as the angel who enchanted the biblical Pool of Bethesda’s waters so they could cure the sick of any disease they had.
“Almost as miraculous was the renewal of the park’s workforce. As skyrocketing taxes to fund government’s various nostrums, coupled with the crime and decay those nostrums produced, drove taxpayers out of the city, New York flirted with bankruptcy, and public-sector employment had to shrink. “The fiscal crisis really worked in our favor,” Rogers explains, “because you could no longer say, ‘You’re taking away the job of a union man.’”
“Gingerly, the conservancy brought in as replacements its own restorers, planters, tree experts—soothingly called interns—who “had to work alongside of and not threaten” the remaining city employees, whose work rules the budget crunch also changed. “You didn’t any longer need three men to prune a tree,” says Rogers, “one man to climb and one man on the ground to hand up the tools and a motor vehicle operator to sit in the truck and wait.” Understandably, “a them-and-us tension” lingered, she recalls, which was finally resolved in 1997, when the city elevated its public-private partnership with the conservancy into a contract for the total management of Central Park.
“But that happened only after Gilder’s grand gesture brought the conservancy’s efforts to spectacular fruition. Rogers, Gilder says, is “one of those tigresses,” and “you want to just keep throwing red meat at them as long as their mouths can open.” By the start of the 1990s, though, “Betsy began to run out of steam,” Gilder says. “She was a little bit like Grant in 1864, holed up there in Petersburg and not getting anywhere. And I said, ‘Betsy, what would it take to more or less finish the park?’”
“Fifty million,” Rogers shot back.
“So I kept thinking about it,” Gilder recalls. “Fifty million I can’t do. But business is pretty good; it’s going to take four or five years to do what Betsy had in mind. Could I somehow come up with $17 million over this period of time?” That would be a third of $51 million: he would challenge the city to match it with another $17 million and the citizens of New York with the final third. Now a trademark of Gilder’s philanthropic entrepreneurship, the challenge grant would not merely amplify the force of Gilder’s own contribution, giving him leverage to accomplish more. Equally important, he says, it would give him and other would-be donors a “needed critique and a market judgment” to be sure their idea made sense. “Matching is a very good way to do that, I’ve learned: if you aren’t going to be with me, then maybe the idea stinks.”
“This idea sang, the money poured in, and once the huge, 55-acre Great Lawn sprang back to life in velvety, shimmering green, connecting all the other improvements around it, New Yorkers suddenly realized they had the park back, whole and pristine, and they flocked into it. With such a magnificent, manicured, orderly public space at its center, the whole city stood poised for the urban rebirth that the 1990s accomplished. “You could even say we were a leading indicator,” Gilder beams. “As the park began to improve, the rest of the city did too.”
“None of this—the new drains, the sprinklers, the imported topsoil, the careful gardening—is about ecology or being “green,” of course. It is a triumph of cultivation, nurture, and artifice, for the park is a consummate work of art that humanizes, tames, and exalts nature’s raw material, like the great man-made work of art that is the city itself. Especially to someone like Gilder—who struck his old friend Judith Berkowitz, when she met him decades ago, as “the incarnation of everything you ever thought of when you thought of urbane New Yorkers”—Central Park is a stage set for the drama of urban civility, a democratic theater where, says Gilder, “rich and poor, black and white, young and old” mingle harmoniously and watch the spectacle that is each other.
“It’s like being at a concert,” Gilder remarks, and the park is at its best “when it’s crowded, and they’re all respectful, and they’re all drinking in the cultural experience.” From 1990 to 1993, Gilder’s impulse to restore New York’s civility and vitality led him to chair the Manhattan Institute, an urban-policy think tank from whose City Journal Mayor Rudy Giuliani joked that he “plagiarized” the policies that revived Gotham.”
Philanthropy Magazine has profiled the major philanthropist whose leadership, vision, and money, set in motion the renewing of Central Park the Conservancy was responsible for.
An excerpt.
“In 1969, legendary investor Richard Gilder moved his stockbrokerage firm’s offices from Wall Street to midtown Manhattan and started walking to work each day across Central Park. The native New Yorker had not realized until then how drastically a few years of bad government had ruined and degraded what he recalled as his idyllic childhood playground. Everywhere, he saw smashed streetlights, shattered benches, drug-dealing thugs, and spaced-out bums. He knew that the trash-choked weeds hid infected heroin needles, and the bushes, muggers. Hardly a blade of grass grew on the lawns, now pocked dustbowls that rain turned to mud.
“I was totally horrified,” Gilder says. “But I think horror is a tremendous thing to have on your side. It is so stark, it just drives you to action.” He launched a two-decade-long campaign to save the 843-acre park, which he capped in 1991 with a $17 million gift—over $27 million today—to restore the Great Lawn at the park’s heart to its Elysian green. That dramatic gesture of daring generosity made us demoralized New Yorkers believe for the first time that our crime-ridden, nearly bankrupt city could become the world’s capital once again. It restored our optimism and self-confidence, reminding us that human ingenuity can solve problems human folly has caused. Some philanthropic gifts, after all, can lift a whole community’s spirit….
“Seed Capital
“Central Park had been Gilder’s backyard ever since he was a boy. In the 1930s, his New Orleans–born mother, the daughter of Jews from Alsace-Lorraine who settled in Mississippi in the 1830s, walked him daily around the park in his stylish wicker perambulator. He played softball there most afternoons after school at P.S. 166 and then P.S. 6. On weekends he rowed on the lake or sledded down the hills. When he returned to his hometown in the mid-1950s as a young stockbroker—a profession he fell into by accident after school at Mount Hermon, Yale, and an unhappy few months at Yale Law—he played a ferocious game of touch football there with fellow Wall Streeters every single fall and winter Sunday for years, rain, shine, or snow.
“In 1968, Gilder left A. G. Becker to start his own stockbrokerage firm “after I had a little disagreement with the boss.” By then, Mayor John V. Lindsay had transformed Central Park into a case study in how not to run a city. Lindsay, the quintessential 1960s limousine liberal, had turned almost every foolish idea of the era into public policy. His Welfare Commissioner, Mitchell “Come-and-Get-It” Ginsberg, had more than doubled the welfare rolls in the name of social justice, deepening the city’s social pathology; his Parks Commissioner, Thomas Hoving, had invited huge crowds to trample Central Park’s lawns into hardpan at rock concerts and at “Hoving’s Happenings,” celebrations of the era’s supposedly free spirit.
“Lindsay’s belief that police should ignore supposedly “victimless” crimes like graffiti vandalism, drug dealing, public urination, and public drunkenness defaced and despoiled public spaces, none more so than Central Park. As we New Yorkers walked across that desert in those days—through the dust and stink of human and canine waste, past the muttering and disheveled deinstitutionalized madmen, under the hard, aggressive stares of the drug dealers—we knew it was not our park. It was theirs. And since such disorder breeds serious crime, we also knew, as the city’s murder rate skyrocketed up to six per day, it was as unsafe as it was unsightly.
“Unlike most New Yorkers, Gilder would not stand for this. “You don’t really realize how something becomes a part of you and you come to love it, until someone insults its dignity,” he says. So he went to see Hoving’s successor, August Heckscher, to see what he could do. Wall Street tycoon George Soros made a similar offer of help shortly afterward, Gilder recalls. “They told him there was another crackpot who’d been messing around; maybe you two guys should get together.” So the two investors decided to go long on Central Park. They sponsored a study showing how private money, a private Board of Guardians, and modern management could rescue the derelict park, and they set up the Central Park Community Fund to begin turning the study into reality.
“By then Abe Beame was mayor,” Gilder recalls dryly. “He hated Manhattan: he was from Brooklyn. He had no use for parks.” For four years, Gilder felt he was tilting at windmills. “We made very little progress, because the mayor was against us.” Beame had a revolving door for Parks Commissioners, with a new one every year, “so we’d just get used to one’s prejudices, and he was fired,” Gilder recounts. “But we weren’t doing any better; we had four successive executive directors. Every time they fired somebody, we fired somebody.” The fund bought a few trucks and some needed equipment for the park’s demoralized, inefficient union workforce, but its main accomplishment was merely to hang in there. “Here’s what I learned from this,” Gilder says: “If you have a good idea, it’ll build, no matter how you screw it up.”
“When Edward Koch took over City Hall in 1978, “the sun burst through,” Gilder says. The new mayor’s Parks Commissioner, Gordon Davis, invented the position of Central Park Administrator for a dynamic urbanist, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers. Rogers was running what she calls a “teeny, peanut” nonprofit, the Central Park Task Force, that she had started as a youth summer-jobs program in 1975. The entrepreneurial Gilder did what entrepreneurs do: he recognized talent, backed it, and egged it on. His community fund merged with her task force to form the Central Park Conservancy, of which Gilder was a founding trustee. “He was an investor, he would say,” recalls Rogers, “and he was investing in, you know, me—and the belief that this could be done.”
“The Central Park Conservancy laid out a master plan for managing and restoring the park, and set about gradually executing it, zone by zone, project by project, as it could raise money. Harlem Meer, on the park’s north edge, turned from a fetid, garbage-choked cesspool back into a crystalline pond, its burned-out boathouse resurrected into a steeply gabled, cupola-crowned romantic confection in pink and green, looking like it had been there since Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park just before the Civil War.
“The Central Park Conservancy laid out a master plan for managing and restoring the park, and set about gradually executing it, zone by zone, project by project, as it could raise money. Harlem Meer, on the park’s north edge, turned from a fetid, garbage-choked cesspool back into a crystalline pond, its burned-out boathouse resurrected into a steeply gabled, cupola-crowned romantic confection in pink and green, looking like it had been there since Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the park just before the Civil War.
“Restorers healed the broken, graffiti-smeared sandstone and crumbled bricks of Bethesda Terrace, where wayward teens had congregated nightly for a decade to smoke dope and misbehave, and transformed it back into New York’s most meltingly beautiful spot. Backed by brightly colored rowboats gliding serenely on the willow-bordered lake, the bronze angel stretching her arm over the great, repaired Victorian fountain seemed as miraculous to us New Yorkers as the angel who enchanted the biblical Pool of Bethesda’s waters so they could cure the sick of any disease they had.
“Almost as miraculous was the renewal of the park’s workforce. As skyrocketing taxes to fund government’s various nostrums, coupled with the crime and decay those nostrums produced, drove taxpayers out of the city, New York flirted with bankruptcy, and public-sector employment had to shrink. “The fiscal crisis really worked in our favor,” Rogers explains, “because you could no longer say, ‘You’re taking away the job of a union man.’”
“Gingerly, the conservancy brought in as replacements its own restorers, planters, tree experts—soothingly called interns—who “had to work alongside of and not threaten” the remaining city employees, whose work rules the budget crunch also changed. “You didn’t any longer need three men to prune a tree,” says Rogers, “one man to climb and one man on the ground to hand up the tools and a motor vehicle operator to sit in the truck and wait.” Understandably, “a them-and-us tension” lingered, she recalls, which was finally resolved in 1997, when the city elevated its public-private partnership with the conservancy into a contract for the total management of Central Park.
“But that happened only after Gilder’s grand gesture brought the conservancy’s efforts to spectacular fruition. Rogers, Gilder says, is “one of those tigresses,” and “you want to just keep throwing red meat at them as long as their mouths can open.” By the start of the 1990s, though, “Betsy began to run out of steam,” Gilder says. “She was a little bit like Grant in 1864, holed up there in Petersburg and not getting anywhere. And I said, ‘Betsy, what would it take to more or less finish the park?’”
“Fifty million,” Rogers shot back.
“So I kept thinking about it,” Gilder recalls. “Fifty million I can’t do. But business is pretty good; it’s going to take four or five years to do what Betsy had in mind. Could I somehow come up with $17 million over this period of time?” That would be a third of $51 million: he would challenge the city to match it with another $17 million and the citizens of New York with the final third. Now a trademark of Gilder’s philanthropic entrepreneurship, the challenge grant would not merely amplify the force of Gilder’s own contribution, giving him leverage to accomplish more. Equally important, he says, it would give him and other would-be donors a “needed critique and a market judgment” to be sure their idea made sense. “Matching is a very good way to do that, I’ve learned: if you aren’t going to be with me, then maybe the idea stinks.”
“This idea sang, the money poured in, and once the huge, 55-acre Great Lawn sprang back to life in velvety, shimmering green, connecting all the other improvements around it, New Yorkers suddenly realized they had the park back, whole and pristine, and they flocked into it. With such a magnificent, manicured, orderly public space at its center, the whole city stood poised for the urban rebirth that the 1990s accomplished. “You could even say we were a leading indicator,” Gilder beams. “As the park began to improve, the rest of the city did too.”
“None of this—the new drains, the sprinklers, the imported topsoil, the careful gardening—is about ecology or being “green,” of course. It is a triumph of cultivation, nurture, and artifice, for the park is a consummate work of art that humanizes, tames, and exalts nature’s raw material, like the great man-made work of art that is the city itself. Especially to someone like Gilder—who struck his old friend Judith Berkowitz, when she met him decades ago, as “the incarnation of everything you ever thought of when you thought of urbane New Yorkers”—Central Park is a stage set for the drama of urban civility, a democratic theater where, says Gilder, “rich and poor, black and white, young and old” mingle harmoniously and watch the spectacle that is each other.
“It’s like being at a concert,” Gilder remarks, and the park is at its best “when it’s crowded, and they’re all respectful, and they’re all drinking in the cultural experience.” From 1990 to 1993, Gilder’s impulse to restore New York’s civility and vitality led him to chair the Manhattan Institute, an urban-policy think tank from whose City Journal Mayor Rudy Giuliani joked that he “plagiarized” the policies that revived Gotham.”
Friday, July 09, 2010
Two Rivers Strategy
As the recent editorial in the Sacramento Bee noted, creating recreational access to the rivers in Sacramento is a great enhancement of our quality of life.
While recreational access work along the Sacramento is moving forward, that along the American has remained sluggish, partially due to the deep funding restrictions faced by Sacramento County, the management entity of the American River Parkway.
Our strategy for providing supplemental funding to the Parkway—creating a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) of adjacent governments and the JPA creating a nonprofit organization for management and fundraising—promises a more robust avenue for the type of Parkway enhancements sorely needed.
An excerpt.
“As Sacramento starts another week of temperatures in the high 90's, here's a special treat for those who want to spend some time along the city's Sacramento River.
“The riverfront has a new section of promenade with some great features for walkers, bicyclists and those who like to lounge as they view the river.
“The official opening of the first phase of the Riverfront Promenade extension – from O Street to R Street – was June 2, but people are only slowly discovering it.
“Walk or bike south from Tower Bridge in Old Sacramento and you'll find a 20-foot-wide pedestrian and bike path, new overlook of the 700-foot-wide river, benches, a set of three concrete lounge chairs that are amazingly comfortable and an R Street pocket park that includes a "cloud vessel shade structure with fog mister."
“The shade structure looks less like a cloud than the internal skeleton of an old wooden ship, a fish or a dirigible, but art is in the eye of the beholder. The artist, Ned Kahn, is known for incorporating natural processes (fog, water, currents, tornados, etc.) into his work. It's a nice addition, and on a 100-degree day that spray of water is more than welcome. Kids, certainly, and kids at heart will find ways to stand under it and enjoy a soaking.
“The California State Railroad Museum's excursion train runs alongside the promenade – a treat to watch, especially when the old steam engines are running.”
While recreational access work along the Sacramento is moving forward, that along the American has remained sluggish, partially due to the deep funding restrictions faced by Sacramento County, the management entity of the American River Parkway.
Our strategy for providing supplemental funding to the Parkway—creating a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) of adjacent governments and the JPA creating a nonprofit organization for management and fundraising—promises a more robust avenue for the type of Parkway enhancements sorely needed.
An excerpt.
“As Sacramento starts another week of temperatures in the high 90's, here's a special treat for those who want to spend some time along the city's Sacramento River.
“The riverfront has a new section of promenade with some great features for walkers, bicyclists and those who like to lounge as they view the river.
“The official opening of the first phase of the Riverfront Promenade extension – from O Street to R Street – was June 2, but people are only slowly discovering it.
“Walk or bike south from Tower Bridge in Old Sacramento and you'll find a 20-foot-wide pedestrian and bike path, new overlook of the 700-foot-wide river, benches, a set of three concrete lounge chairs that are amazingly comfortable and an R Street pocket park that includes a "cloud vessel shade structure with fog mister."
“The shade structure looks less like a cloud than the internal skeleton of an old wooden ship, a fish or a dirigible, but art is in the eye of the beholder. The artist, Ned Kahn, is known for incorporating natural processes (fog, water, currents, tornados, etc.) into his work. It's a nice addition, and on a 100-degree day that spray of water is more than welcome. Kids, certainly, and kids at heart will find ways to stand under it and enjoy a soaking.
“The California State Railroad Museum's excursion train runs alongside the promenade – a treat to watch, especially when the old steam engines are running.”
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Interview Published
An interview with the president of the American River Parkway Preservation Society, Michael Rushford, was published, in the July issue, by Inside Publications, page 24.
An excerpt.
"Growing up in Carmichael in the early 60s, Michael Rushford learned an important lesson from the nearby American River: change is inevitable.
“In the natural world, things are always changing,” he says, recalling how weather and releases from Folsom Dam dramatically impacted the river, its nature and everything along its banks.
“Every year the topography of the river bed would change a little. Each summer we would find new rapids, new lagoons, new islands. And, I remember that after one really wet winter, a big tree, which we considered invincible, fell into the river,” says Rushford, smiling at the notion that even massive trees can topple.
As president of the American River Parkway Preservation Society, he would like to topple the way the parkway is managed. Rushford and his group wants to get government out the Parkway management business.
“We do not believe that local governments which share its management, or the special interest groups vying for influence over its future, represent the majority of people who visit and use the American River Parkway,” he explains. “We try to speak for the bulk of parkway users who want a well-managed, clean, safe and accessible place to enjoy the river and the beauty of the surrounding area.”
"According to Rushford, there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
“No one entity is really in charge, but several share the responsibility,” he says. “Since the 1980s more and more people have become regular parkway visitors. The financial demands for maintenance and improvement have increased, while local governments seem to view the parkway as more of a problem than a priority.”
"His group believes the parkway should be managed and maintained by a non-profit conservancy chartered solely for this purpose and beyond the influence of narrow interests or government budgets.
“The governing board should share a vision that recognizes the parkway belongs to everyone,” Rushford says.
"The parkway preservation society supports the creation of an endowment to provide funding, utilizing volunteers and paid staff for maintenance and improvements, and to support cultural, recreational and educational programs.
"While Rushford wants government to get out of parkway management, he does see a role for government: in the area of law enforcement.
“Today, parts of the river are a crime problem and off limits to most people,” he explains. “Some of this has to do with the times we live in, but I don’t believe that we should abandon the goal of making a public place that so many people enjoy a safe place as well.”
An excerpt.
"Growing up in Carmichael in the early 60s, Michael Rushford learned an important lesson from the nearby American River: change is inevitable.
“In the natural world, things are always changing,” he says, recalling how weather and releases from Folsom Dam dramatically impacted the river, its nature and everything along its banks.
“Every year the topography of the river bed would change a little. Each summer we would find new rapids, new lagoons, new islands. And, I remember that after one really wet winter, a big tree, which we considered invincible, fell into the river,” says Rushford, smiling at the notion that even massive trees can topple.
As president of the American River Parkway Preservation Society, he would like to topple the way the parkway is managed. Rushford and his group wants to get government out the Parkway management business.
“We do not believe that local governments which share its management, or the special interest groups vying for influence over its future, represent the majority of people who visit and use the American River Parkway,” he explains. “We try to speak for the bulk of parkway users who want a well-managed, clean, safe and accessible place to enjoy the river and the beauty of the surrounding area.”
"According to Rushford, there are too many cooks in the kitchen.
“No one entity is really in charge, but several share the responsibility,” he says. “Since the 1980s more and more people have become regular parkway visitors. The financial demands for maintenance and improvement have increased, while local governments seem to view the parkway as more of a problem than a priority.”
"His group believes the parkway should be managed and maintained by a non-profit conservancy chartered solely for this purpose and beyond the influence of narrow interests or government budgets.
“The governing board should share a vision that recognizes the parkway belongs to everyone,” Rushford says.
"The parkway preservation society supports the creation of an endowment to provide funding, utilizing volunteers and paid staff for maintenance and improvements, and to support cultural, recreational and educational programs.
"While Rushford wants government to get out of parkway management, he does see a role for government: in the area of law enforcement.
“Today, parts of the river are a crime problem and off limits to most people,” he explains. “Some of this has to do with the times we live in, but I don’t believe that we should abandon the goal of making a public place that so many people enjoy a safe place as well.”
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Regional Parks Tax Increase Proposal
The recent proposal to the County Board of Supervisors, to fund county regional parks, Sacramento County Regional Parks Strategic Workshop, was commented on by ARPPS in a press release yesterday, posted here and, also posted to our website.
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release May 24, 2010 Sacramento, California
AMERICAN RIVER PARKWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY (ARPPS)
REGIONAL PARKS TAX INCREASE PROPOSAL
A proposal was presented to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors this month by the regional parks department, with support from some Parkway advocacy groups, to consider adopting one of three strategies to provide money for regional parks.
Each strategy calls for an increase in taxes requiring a two-thirds vote for approval.
Each strategy uses the American River Parkway as the lead park for the marketing of the tax increase for all regional parks.
While appreciating the concern the supporters of this proposal have for the Parkway, this is a direction that could actually cause more harm than good. Potentially, this could divert resources and attention from strategies which have a chance of becoming reality and promise more long term funding sustainability. There is a better way.
Raising taxes to pay for parks is not an equitable approach, as those who do not use parks, or realize an adjacent property benefit, would be required to pay an additional tax for something they do not use or benefit from.
Those who live adjacent to the North Sacramento area of the Parkway are already burdened by neighborhood crime and habitat degradation caused by the illegal camping of the homeless. These citizens will see no value in having their taxes increased to continue failed policies.
There is a better way, and it can be found in the funding success of other signature parks, such as the Central Park Conservancy and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
Seek support for the American River Parkway through the non-coercive method of philanthropy tied to nonprofit daily management and Joint Powers Authority governance. (see published article posted to blog)
Based on the deep love the regional community has for the Parkway, a philanthropic strategy offers more promise than a tax increase.
Organizational Leadership
American River Parkway Preservation Society
Sacramento, California
May 24, 2010
PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release May 24, 2010 Sacramento, California
AMERICAN RIVER PARKWAY PRESERVATION SOCIETY (ARPPS)
REGIONAL PARKS TAX INCREASE PROPOSAL
A proposal was presented to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors this month by the regional parks department, with support from some Parkway advocacy groups, to consider adopting one of three strategies to provide money for regional parks.
Each strategy calls for an increase in taxes requiring a two-thirds vote for approval.
Each strategy uses the American River Parkway as the lead park for the marketing of the tax increase for all regional parks.
While appreciating the concern the supporters of this proposal have for the Parkway, this is a direction that could actually cause more harm than good. Potentially, this could divert resources and attention from strategies which have a chance of becoming reality and promise more long term funding sustainability. There is a better way.
Raising taxes to pay for parks is not an equitable approach, as those who do not use parks, or realize an adjacent property benefit, would be required to pay an additional tax for something they do not use or benefit from.
Those who live adjacent to the North Sacramento area of the Parkway are already burdened by neighborhood crime and habitat degradation caused by the illegal camping of the homeless. These citizens will see no value in having their taxes increased to continue failed policies.
There is a better way, and it can be found in the funding success of other signature parks, such as the Central Park Conservancy and the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy.
Seek support for the American River Parkway through the non-coercive method of philanthropy tied to nonprofit daily management and Joint Powers Authority governance. (see published article posted to blog)
Based on the deep love the regional community has for the Parkway, a philanthropic strategy offers more promise than a tax increase.
Organizational Leadership
American River Parkway Preservation Society
Sacramento, California
May 24, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
ARPPS Letter Published in the Sacramento Bee Today
Let nonprofit run parkway
Re "Give a little love to our local parks" (Editorial, May 11): While the idea of adequately funding the American River Parkway and other regional parks resonates with many in the region, the idea of increasing taxes, as called for in a Bee editorial, on an already overtaxed population does not.
There is a better way to raise money for the American River Parkway. What many jurisdictions have done to help their signature parks is convert to nonprofit daily management and philanthropic fundraising, under contract to local government park ownership. This model has worked very well in New York City and Pittsburgh.
The advantages are many, besides the obvious one of not raising taxes. The funds raised by the park nonprofit are safe from the type of government fund-shifting common during periods of economic stress. Philanthropic fundraising allows for parkway enhancements we have not seen in years as the county has been running a substantial shortfall for basic maintenance funding for the parkway.
The strategy we favor is to have the parkway-adjacent cities and the county form a joint powers authority for governance and core funding. The JPA would then create a nonprofit organization, which contracts with the JPA for daily management and supplemental fundraising for the parkway.
– David H. Lukenbill, Sacramento, senior policy director, American River Parkway Preservation Society
Re "Give a little love to our local parks" (Editorial, May 11): While the idea of adequately funding the American River Parkway and other regional parks resonates with many in the region, the idea of increasing taxes, as called for in a Bee editorial, on an already overtaxed population does not.
There is a better way to raise money for the American River Parkway. What many jurisdictions have done to help their signature parks is convert to nonprofit daily management and philanthropic fundraising, under contract to local government park ownership. This model has worked very well in New York City and Pittsburgh.
The advantages are many, besides the obvious one of not raising taxes. The funds raised by the park nonprofit are safe from the type of government fund-shifting common during periods of economic stress. Philanthropic fundraising allows for parkway enhancements we have not seen in years as the county has been running a substantial shortfall for basic maintenance funding for the parkway.
The strategy we favor is to have the parkway-adjacent cities and the county form a joint powers authority for governance and core funding. The JPA would then create a nonprofit organization, which contracts with the JPA for daily management and supplemental fundraising for the parkway.
– David H. Lukenbill, Sacramento, senior policy director, American River Parkway Preservation Society
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Tax Increase for Parks?
With a lead photo reminding us of the illegal camping problem in the Parkway, this article from the Sacramento Bee reports on the effort to form a special regional park district—requiring the raising of taxes—to fund the parks.
We feel there is a better way to support the American River Parkway—without raising taxes on already over-burdened taxpayers—which is detailed on our website news and strategy pages.
An excerpt from the Bee article.
“To address the threat to regional parks – including the renowned American River Parkway – Sacramento County officials are considering asking voters for a new tax to fund the system.
“In addition, county officials are considering a wholesale reorganization of the parks department – possibly forming a separate district to run the parks.
“The county is grappling with a projected general fund deficit of $166.5 million for the coming fiscal year and may cut the parks department's budget by 40 percent.
“The proposed fixes wouldn't help with budget cuts the Board of Supervisors is set to make in several weeks. Officials are, however, hoping reorganization could provide a long-term solution for the region's parks, which often lose out on funding to mandated social service programs or politically popular agencies such as the Sheriff's Department.
"The current model is not a sustainable model," Paul Hahn, administrator of the county's Municipal Services Agency, told the board at a parks workshop Wednesday. "We need to think differently."
“Nearly 100 parks supporters, many wearing green shirts, filled the chambers Wednesday afternoon to support officials' efforts to find a stable revenue source for the parks and to urge supervisors to keep funding parks until such a source is in place….
“Baker presented three options the parks department is considering. They include forming a new regional parks and open space district; partnering with neighboring cities and districts; or creating a community facilities district.
“The bureaucratic hurdles are slightly different under each scenario, but all would require approval by a two-thirds vote of the public to approve a new tax.”
We feel there is a better way to support the American River Parkway—without raising taxes on already over-burdened taxpayers—which is detailed on our website news and strategy pages.
An excerpt from the Bee article.
“To address the threat to regional parks – including the renowned American River Parkway – Sacramento County officials are considering asking voters for a new tax to fund the system.
“In addition, county officials are considering a wholesale reorganization of the parks department – possibly forming a separate district to run the parks.
“The county is grappling with a projected general fund deficit of $166.5 million for the coming fiscal year and may cut the parks department's budget by 40 percent.
“The proposed fixes wouldn't help with budget cuts the Board of Supervisors is set to make in several weeks. Officials are, however, hoping reorganization could provide a long-term solution for the region's parks, which often lose out on funding to mandated social service programs or politically popular agencies such as the Sheriff's Department.
"The current model is not a sustainable model," Paul Hahn, administrator of the county's Municipal Services Agency, told the board at a parks workshop Wednesday. "We need to think differently."
“Nearly 100 parks supporters, many wearing green shirts, filled the chambers Wednesday afternoon to support officials' efforts to find a stable revenue source for the parks and to urge supervisors to keep funding parks until such a source is in place….
“Baker presented three options the parks department is considering. They include forming a new regional parks and open space district; partnering with neighboring cities and districts; or creating a community facilities district.
“The bureaucratic hurdles are slightly different under each scenario, but all would require approval by a two-thirds vote of the public to approve a new tax.”
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