Paul Bass Photo
Entrance to the new Orange Trail at Edgewood Park.
(Opinion) I was troubled when the mayor proposed killing our Department of Parks, Recreation & Trees by merging its functions into two other city departments back in March –- and am even more troubled now as we struggle to make our way through the COVID-19 pandemic. Our parks are our greatest opportunity for healthy, public space that supports social distancing. At a time when we should be lifting up our parks as places to recreate, recover, and simply breathe, I’m worried that we are squandering both their immediate and long-term promise.
Indeed, the recovery will happen in public space, explains Phil Myrick, the CEO of Project for Public Spaces:
“Now is not the time to cut funds to the agencies and organizations that steward our public realm. On the contrary, now is the time to finally undo what Jane Jacobs once called the “great unbalance” in the way we fund public space: to respond nimbly and adapt continuously, we must invest in the ongoing management, programming, and refinement of public space, rather than expensive capital improvements alone.”
“In municipal budgets, cities should treat public spaces as what they are: fundamental building blocks of our health, social resilience, and democracy. Parks and other public spaces have long been a last priority across the board compared to other types of infrastructure.”
The mayor’s proposed budget effectively kills the department by zeroing out its budget and merging half of its functions into a new youth and recreation department, the other half into a new parks and public works department.
Seventeen percent of the city’s land serves us as public open space, much of it donated to the city over the past 200 years as a means of knitting our community together.
As the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven explains on a webpage dedicated to the enduring legacy of greater New Haven’s parks, “Public parks and open spaces of are vital to quality of life in Greater New Haven. They attract families and neighbors outside to share space and meet each other. By providing safe and free areas to run, walk, bike, and play, they contribute to public health. They lower air and water pollution. And they are important sources of civic pride.”
New Haven’s parks department has been underfunded and, and, reportedly, undermanaged for many years. . But abandoning a city department with the sole focus on parks, trees, and recreation signals a further retreat away from managing our public space assets at a time when they are most important for us.
The mayor’s budget argues that splintering the work of the department between public works and our new youth department will “create operational efficiencies and improve customer service” and “ensure the coordination of services and minimize the duplication of efforts to improve youth outcomes.” Maybe, but rarely does one read (or even write) words like that believing in them. I fear that less is less and that gone is really gone.
Unquestionably New Haven’s city government has budgetary and organizational challenges. Responses to those should be strategic and bold. Killing our parks department is neither. And given the need for safe spaces right now where we can stretch our wings, look up at the sky, and be human, backing away from our commitment to our parks might be downright dangerous. The days are only getting hotter and we’re only getting more restless.
The 2020 – 21 City of New Haven budget will likely need revisions over the next year as COVID-19 turns our world upside down. The Board of Alders should reject this maneuver on Tuesday night. Much work will need to be done to steer our City through recovery. Killing our parks department will only make that harder.