Parks abandoned to beg for charity
Nov 26, 2006 14:57 | City Services
I attended
a Civic Parks Alliance
conference on October 21 titled,
"Partners in Parks: Building a Movement." As a
landscape architect, I was happy to see all those
dedicated advocates for public open space.
But there was, as usual, a basic assumption that we shouldn't expect to get enough government support for parks. We've all heard the excuses: Public budgets are too tight. Park maintenance is too expensive and government can only do "the basics" so we'll have to fund-raise privately for anything more. Parks are abandoned by the government because people and public officials see parks as "frills."
So, we focus on figuring out how to get private resources to support our public realm -- corporate donations, foundations, private philanthropy, "Friends groups," fundraising, user fees and volunteer work.
This is exactly what politicians want us to do: Resign ourselves to losing what we're entitled to as taxpayers and citizens, or step in and pay for things ourselves if we care about them -- and can afford it. It's a false choice, and we shouldn't accept it.
Don't let them off the hook!
If we do, we're headed for a two-tier public realm: Pretty and neat where businesses benefit financially from "good corporate citizenship" and where wealthy residents can afford to protect their safety, aesthetics, environment and property values. Shabby and neglected where there are no tourists to embarrass the politicians, no corporations looking for "good-will" marketing, and people are too busy wrestling with issues of survival, like living wages, education, medical expenses, drugs and crime.
People keep saying that the private sector has to step in and protect our parks, because the public officials won't. Well, they certainly won't if they see that we will.
They've already learned that they can ignore services for poor and powerless people and still stay in office.
And now they're learning that they can ignore services for the new urban gentry, who don't need to spend time begging officials for services; they can just buy their own.
Amazingly, Steve Burrington, Commissioner of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, said that, after years of neglected parks in urban areas, the "unaffordability of housing in cities" is actually "promising for parks." Translation: Gentrification is the way to get good parks. Displacement of low-income people, who can't make up for government negligence, is an acceptable trade-off.
Look around: it's not only about parks. Parents and teachers are having to pay out-of-pocket for school supplies, activity fees, bus fees -- the City even has a website where teachers can beg for donations! Trash removal and street clean-up are increasingly becoming the responsibility of residents and businesses expected clean up and to “adopt” City trash cans. Transit -- for a select few -- is being privatized by institutions' shuttle bus systems. Even planning is privatized in Boston; the BRA has developers funding their own planning studies!
If we ever want to get our parks properly funded as public domain, we have to ally with advocates for other services to hold our politicians accountable. Let’s not compete with each other for a public pie that’s being shrunk on us.
We can't keep "chasing a receding tide," as one of the conference speakers described private efforts to cover the gap as public investment slides away. We have turn the tide.
The problem is not lack of money; the government isn't impoverished and incompetent -- the myth that politicians use to excuse their abdication. They have the money and can hire the expertise -- just as private friends and conservancies do.
But they choose to create a shortage, a "strategic deficit," as the Reaganite neo-cons call it, by giving away the treasury in corporate welfare, "business incentives," patronage and cronyistic deals, no-bid contracts, and other "waste, fraud and abuse" that is hard for us to find out about.
We have to make it our business to expose those leaks. ABN is now working on a comprehensive inventory. If you have any tips, send them in. We’ll check them out.
We have to tell the mayor and the governor that they owe us our public services, and we won't take a shrug and turned-out pockets for an answer any more. We can only do that if we can confront them with our knowledge of where our money is really going.
But there was, as usual, a basic assumption that we shouldn't expect to get enough government support for parks. We've all heard the excuses: Public budgets are too tight. Park maintenance is too expensive and government can only do "the basics" so we'll have to fund-raise privately for anything more. Parks are abandoned by the government because people and public officials see parks as "frills."
So, we focus on figuring out how to get private resources to support our public realm -- corporate donations, foundations, private philanthropy, "Friends groups," fundraising, user fees and volunteer work.
This is exactly what politicians want us to do: Resign ourselves to losing what we're entitled to as taxpayers and citizens, or step in and pay for things ourselves if we care about them -- and can afford it. It's a false choice, and we shouldn't accept it.
Don't let them off the hook!
If we do, we're headed for a two-tier public realm: Pretty and neat where businesses benefit financially from "good corporate citizenship" and where wealthy residents can afford to protect their safety, aesthetics, environment and property values. Shabby and neglected where there are no tourists to embarrass the politicians, no corporations looking for "good-will" marketing, and people are too busy wrestling with issues of survival, like living wages, education, medical expenses, drugs and crime.
People keep saying that the private sector has to step in and protect our parks, because the public officials won't. Well, they certainly won't if they see that we will.
They've already learned that they can ignore services for poor and powerless people and still stay in office.
And now they're learning that they can ignore services for the new urban gentry, who don't need to spend time begging officials for services; they can just buy their own.
Amazingly, Steve Burrington, Commissioner of Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, said that, after years of neglected parks in urban areas, the "unaffordability of housing in cities" is actually "promising for parks." Translation: Gentrification is the way to get good parks. Displacement of low-income people, who can't make up for government negligence, is an acceptable trade-off.
Look around: it's not only about parks. Parents and teachers are having to pay out-of-pocket for school supplies, activity fees, bus fees -- the City even has a website where teachers can beg for donations! Trash removal and street clean-up are increasingly becoming the responsibility of residents and businesses expected clean up and to “adopt” City trash cans. Transit -- for a select few -- is being privatized by institutions' shuttle bus systems. Even planning is privatized in Boston; the BRA has developers funding their own planning studies!
If we ever want to get our parks properly funded as public domain, we have to ally with advocates for other services to hold our politicians accountable. Let’s not compete with each other for a public pie that’s being shrunk on us.
We can't keep "chasing a receding tide," as one of the conference speakers described private efforts to cover the gap as public investment slides away. We have turn the tide.
The problem is not lack of money; the government isn't impoverished and incompetent -- the myth that politicians use to excuse their abdication. They have the money and can hire the expertise -- just as private friends and conservancies do.
But they choose to create a shortage, a "strategic deficit," as the Reaganite neo-cons call it, by giving away the treasury in corporate welfare, "business incentives," patronage and cronyistic deals, no-bid contracts, and other "waste, fraud and abuse" that is hard for us to find out about.
We have to make it our business to expose those leaks. ABN is now working on a comprehensive inventory. If you have any tips, send them in. We’ll check them out.
We have to tell the mayor and the governor that they owe us our public services, and we won't take a shrug and turned-out pockets for an answer any more. We can only do that if we can confront them with our knowledge of where our money is really going.
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