When they’re good, a city’s parks provide a tangible return on a taxpayer’s dollar. Especially during a recession, parks offer free entertainment and a healthy escape.
But park services are among the first casualties when a city’s budget needs trimming. The 2009 budget for the Parks and Recreation Department is $53,214,539 — about $3 million less than last year’s. The department has shed 95 full-time positions since 2008; its staff has shrunk from 746 full-time employees in 2000 to 359 today.
Visitors to KC parks have often found crumbling infrastructure and ragged maintenance. More than a third (35 percent) of respondents to 2008’s citizen-satisfaction survey reported that they had “seldom to never” set foot in a city park during the previous year. According to City Auditor Gary White’s report, fewer than half of the respondents (48 percent) reported satisfaction with the overall quality of city parks, recreation programs and facilities.
Lack of funding is part of the problem; lack of community engagement is another. But a handful of the city’s parks has improved, thanks to a few citizens who believe that if you want better service, you have to ask for it. Sometimes it’s just a matter of speaking up. Other times, you have to raise a little hell.
Gillham Park
The Mom: Roxana Shaffe
Roxana Shaffe says Gillham Park in the 1990s was a sand pit littered with broken bottles and used condoms. She was a new renter near the park, but friends who grew up in the neighborhood told her that it hadn't always been that way. Shaffe and her husband, Rob Menteer, bought a house near Gillham Park in 2002 and had the first of their three children the following year. Menteer participated in the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, where he and Shaffe learned that past efforts to improve the park, which runs along both sides of Gillham Road from 39th Street to Brush Creek Boulevard, had hit a wall.
By 2005, Shaffe had become accustomed to avoiding Gillham Park. She would pass it on her way to Loose Park, wondering why she should have to drive her kids three miles to find safe, modern playground equipment when a perfectly good but neglected park was just steps from her home.
It occurred to Shaffe that the staff of Kansas City's Parks and Recreation Department might be unaware that a new generation of families raising young children now lived by the park. "We don't just get a good park because we deserve one," she says she told a group of mothers once, when conversation turned to the park's decrepit condition.
A similar discussion with her husband prompted him to ask, "Why don't you go do something about it?" So Shaffe, who describes herself as a lifetime loudmouth, began researching the process for requesting a new playground in Gillham Park. Friends advised her of the unspoken first rule of doing business with the mayor-appointed commissioners of Kansas City's Board of Parks and Recreation: "Whoever is in their face is who gets things done," she says.
Shaffe made it her full-time job to get in the board's face. But first, she needed funding. The Parks and Recreation commissioners usually advise citizens to try to score Public Improvement Advisory Committee dollars from the city for capital improvements like new playgrounds before coming before their board. So Shaffe and a neighbor, Stacey Roste, began attending 4th District PIAC meetings in 2005. They sat in the back and watched the tactics of other groups whose requests earned approval. They learned that they needed to form an official committee and prove they were involved in park stewardship and their community. They became the Friends of Gillham Park.
Showing 1-4 of 4
"Enough is enough of taking things out of the 'hood and putting everything else in parts of the city with money," Riley says. She was disgusted when a new $8 million aquatics center called the Springs opened at Tiffany Springs Park, north of the river, in 2006.
What a load of CRAP... I get really sick and tired of hearing people whine about taking stuff out of the HOOD and putting it where there is money... I just came from the ZOO and that place is a dump... it is in a horrible area, blighted with crime and undesirable for anyone to be without worrying over safety... I wish they would move the zoo out of the HOOD and stick it somewhere where I feel safe, then I would go more than once every 5-6 years... stick it in the hood and they paint it with graffiti, rip it apart, and try to steal it... who cares where the money is... put it where people will take care of it... and stop the inner city drugs and shooting and people might care about bringing some of that money back... other wise... I do not blame them for not building stuff there... quit whining about it and take personal responsibility, make it safe and you'd be amazed what happens...
"Enough is enough of taking things out of the 'hood and putting everything else in parts of the city with money," Riley says. She was disgusted when a new $8 million aquatics center called the Springs opened at Tiffany Springs Park, north of the river, in 2006.
What a load of CRAP... I get really sick and tired of hearing people whine about taking stuff out of the HOOD and putting it where there is money... I just came from the ZOO and that place is a dump... it is in a horrible area, blighted with crime and undesirable for anyone to be without worrying over safety... I wish they would move the zoo out of the HOOD and stick it somewhere where I feel safe, then I would go more than once every 5-6 years... stick it in the hood and they paint it with graffiti, rip it apart, and try to steal it... who cares where the money is... put it where people will take care of it... and stop the inner city drugs and shooting and people might care about bringing some of that money back... other wise... I do not blame them for not building stuff there... quit whining about it and take personal responsibility, make it safe and you'd be amazed what happens...
"Enough is enough of taking things out of the 'hood and putting everything else in parts of the city with money," Riley says. She was disgusted when a new $8 million aquatics center called the Springs opened at Tiffany Springs Park, north of the river, in 2006. What a load of CRAP... I get really sick and tired of hearing people whine about taking stuff out of the HOOD and putting it where there is money... I just came from the ZOO and that place is a dump... it is in a horrible area, blighted with crime and undesirable for anyone to be without worrying over safety... I wish they would move the zoo out of the HOOD and stick it somewhere where I feel safe, then I would go more than once every 5-6 years... stick it in the hood and they paint it with graffiti, rip it apart, and try to steal it... who cares where the money is... put it where people will take care of it... and stop the inner city drugs and shooting and people might care about bringing some of that money back... other wise... I do not blame them for not building stuff there... quit whining about it and take personal responsibility, make it safe and you'd be amazed what happens...
"Enough is enough of taking things out of the 'hood and putting everything else in parts of the city with money," Riley says. She was disgusted when a new $8 million aquatics center called the Springs opened at Tiffany Springs Park, north of the river, in 2006. What a load of CRAP... I get really sick and tired of hearing people whine about taking stuff out of the HOOD and putting it where there is money... I just came from the ZOO and that place is a dump... it is in a horrible area, blighted with crime and undesirable for anyone to be without worrying over safety... I wish they would move the zoo out of the HOOD and stick it somewhere where I feel safe, then I would go more than once every 5-6 years... stick it in the hood and they paint it with graffiti, rip it apart, and try to steal it... who cares where the money is... put it where people will take care of it... and stop the inner city drugs and shooting and people might care about bringing some of that money back... other wise... I do not blame them for not building stuff there... quit whining about it and take personal responsibility, make it safe and you'd be amazed what happens...
like
dislike
