Outdoor Resources Review Group Report - American Recreation ...

An urban oasis, Boston’s Public Garden has soothed city
dwellers for 150 years. Urban areas, where four out of
five Americans live, confront serious outdoors-funding
challenges, as overstretched budgets are squeezed
ever harder.
to Land Vote, a data base established by
the Trust for Public Land and the Land Trust
Alliance, since 1996 more than 75 percent of
nearly 1,500 conservation funding measures
have passed at the county, municipal, or
district level, contributing more than $25 billion
dollars to conservation. Some local measures
have received a boost in states that provide
matching state funds.
Like their state-level counterparts, the highest
priority for local park officials is funding for
capital projects. Urban areas, where about
80 percent of Americans live, are stressed in
funding facility and landscape restoration and
related improvements that directly benefit
community residents. They also face shortfalls
for funding operations and maintenance
and recreational programs that reach youth.
With greater frequency, parks departments
reportedly have been postponing needed
maintenance, laying off staff, some even closing
while hoping to fill the gap through volunteers.
Conditions have deteriorated and access to
nature, recreation, and outdoor play spaces
20 GREAT OUTDOORS AMERICA
has been shut off, thereby diminishing overall
community livability. Local jobs are being shed,
after-school programs benefiting at-risk youth
and financially disadvantaged families are
suffering, and opportunities to promote health,
fitness, and education are being lost.
No dedicated source of federal funds exists to
meet local needs. The federal Urban Park and
Recreation Recovery Program, administered since
1978 by the National Park Service, aimed to help
rehabilitate critically needed recreation facilities
in more than 300 distressed localities but has
not been funded in many years. When the
Department of Housing and Urban Development
was formed in the 1960s, there was an Open
Space Program for cities that recognized the
importance of parks and recreation in community
life, but that program no longer exists.
Park officials typically lack clout as city
budgets are allocated to meet competing local
priorities for public safety, water systems, and
roads. Advocates for local parks and recreation
have not yet marshaled the arguments and
documented the benefits to grab the attention
of public officials who set priorities and allocate
budgets. Some parks advocates are now calling
on local governments to rethink the role of
parks in urban affairs, not just as open space
or recreation sites, but as green infrastructure
that provides a cost-effective means to help
meet multiple public goals. These include
reducing storm water runoff from city streets,
improving health, accommodating bicycles,
attracting tourists, creating jobs, and fostering
community revitalization.
In sum, though federal, state, and local
funding for conservation may be significant,
programs address many different goals besides
conservation, they are not coordinated, and they
do not always address conservation priorities.