New Orleans has a shot at becoming a city of great parks

[Charlies Neighborhood News]

New Orleans has a shot at becoming a city of great parks

https://thelensnola.org/2019/01/04/citizen-groups-back-plan-to-better-fund-and-manage-city-green-space/?fbclid=IwAR3VvisN6c_20RjgemS5SiVfVSRqnHz1r1rTBXeALwfP-hITTRvFRoq6Hv0

A plan. First and foremost, we believe New Orleans must hire a team of professional experts to create a citywide master plan for its green space, all of it, not just our best-known parks. The Parks, Green Space and Recreation Master Plan has been proposed for years and is recommended in the revised city Master Plan that was adopted two years ago. It needs to happen now.

• Quality updates. The plan should be monitored with periodic assessments of our citywide parks, measuring them against the objectives of the master plan and the evolving desires of the citizenry.
• Funding. Master Plans don’t come cheap, and so we propose that the four parks slated to receive the new millage must agree to remit 2 percent of their money to cover the cost of the master plan as well as periodic analysis of parks-and-recreation conditions.
• Broad oversight. We have proposed the formation of a Parks and Recreation Steering Advisory Committee that includes parks administrators, city officials, and parks advocates. We believe that parks planning and decision making should be a more inclusive process. Other green-space advocates must be given seats at the table, including community and neighborhood organizations, such as Coliseum Square Association and Lafayette Square Conservancy and Parks For All. Groups like ours try to represent the desires of ordinary citizens in the care and shaping of our parks system. It is not useful from anyone’s standpoint for private-citizen groups to be scrambling for information and input at the last minute, only then to discover that backroom decisions have already been made.
• Broader parks coordination. In addition, the leadership of the four agencies that will draw from the millage – Audubon, City Park, Parks & Parkways, and the City’s Recreation Department — should coordinate with other groups that manage significant public acreage, including the French Market Corporation, the Downtown Development District, the levee boards, and the Fish and Wildlife Service.
• Stop commercialization. We are urging that the Cooperative Endeavor Agreement include language that resists the tendency of our large parks to justify commercializing green space based on the argument that they lack sufficient operating funds.
• No loss of green space. Finally, the wording we have proposed for the Cooperative Endeavor Agreement goes a step further. It would require the big parks to embrace the idea that there can be no further loss of city greenspace. Period. That’s a principle already set forth in the city Master Plan and adopted by the City Council.
• Scott Howard is president of Parks For All, an activist nonprofit dedicated to the creation, maintenance and beautification of public parks, playgrounds and green space throughout New Orleans.