URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning and Mayor Justin Elicker.
The Yale-affiliated environmental nonprofit that already oversees city tree plantings has been tapped to help figure out the future structure of New Haven’s parks department.
That nonprofit is the Urban Resources Initiative (URI).
At a Thursday morning tree-focused press conference at King Robinson School in Newhallville, Mayor Justin Elicker announced that the city has selected URI to serve as the lead consultant charged with thinking through how City Hall should best tend New Haven’s public greenspaces.
That means that, over the coming months, URI will lead a series of focus groups and public meetings about how exactly the city should restructure its current Department of Parks and Public Works, with the goal of providing a report and recommendations to the mayor in the runup to next year’s budget season. URI Director Colleen Murphy-Dunning said that the new contract with the city is for $17,000.
The city put out a request for proposals (RFP) on this very issue back in September in response to stepped-up public criticism of the Elicker administration’s merging in 2020 of the parks and public works departments (which also created a new, merged Youth and Recreation Department.)
During Thursday’s press conference, Elicker mentioned the merging of the parks and public works departments three years ago. “Now we’re going to separate those out again,” he said, with the help of URI guiding the city through a public-input process first.
The city-issued RFP, which has now been awarded to URI, reads in part: “The City of New Haven invites organizations, and businesses with qualified facilitators to submit proposals for conducting a series of community engagement meetings aimed at restructuring our Parks and Recreation units to better serve the public and safeguard our natural resources in a more effective and equitable manner.”
It calls on the hired consultant to conduct individual interviews with city officials, community leaders, alders, parks users, youth organizations, public school representatives, parks commission members, and environmental experts; to organize a series of virtual and in-person focus group sessions; to develop community surveys in English and Spanish to assess public opinions on city parks services; and to draft a report with recommendations for the Elicker administration on how best to restructure the city’s current park services. Click here to read the RFP in full.