Parks-plan meetings: What they want to hear from you

April 18, 2008 10:19 am
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 |   West Seattle news | West Seattle parks

When the city Parks Department started its first tour of meetings last fall to ask for input on a potential Strategic Plan, we covered the Southwest Community Center version of the meeting in late November (read the story here). After going back to Southwest CC to check in on the second round of meetings last night — three more in West Seattle in the next six days for your chance to have a say — we can tell you how these meetings work, what you’ll hear, what the Parks employees say they want to hear from you, and even some parks-related revelations that emerged last night:

Southwest Community Center is unique among West Seattle’s community centers, for several reasons — including the swimming pool next door, and Seattle Public Schools facilities on all sides — the athletic complex to the east, Denny Middle School to the west, Chief Sealth High School a short distance northeast.

As we were reminded last night, the Parks Department meetings are not traveling roadshows where suits from department headquarters show up and make the same presentation everywhere — they involve each facility’s staff. Last night, Southwest CC staffer Andre Franklin brought members of the Southwest Teen Advisory Council to help present the six tenets of the draft Strategy Plan for public comment. After that, the format was free-flowing — questions, comments, some people just quietly filling out the comment form (you can do it online too, and we’ll have that link at the end of this writeup).

When we covered the first-round parks-plan meeting at Southwest CC in November, about 30 people showed up, enough for breakout discussion groups. Last night’s turnout was about half that, so breakout groups weren’t needed, though the department had prepared for it with one of the classic sorting tools (colored dots on the agenda/comment form packets handed to attendees on arrival). New parks superintendent Tim Gallagher observed the meeting in November but wasn’t on hand this time; Franklin was joined at the front of the room by a veteran parks manager named Marylou Whiteford, and at least one other employee with a name tag reading “parks policy manager” was in the audience.

Andre and his teen assistants read from a signboard with each of the six goals from the draft plan (read it in its entirety here) – goals the department wants to know whether you agree on, including their subpoints. Here they are:

1. Steward Seattle’s park and open spaces for long-term sustainability (with six subpoints to be rated)
2. Provide recreation and learning opportunities to support healthy and diverse communities (five subpoints to be rated)
3. Actively engage and build relationships with Seattle’s diverse population (five subpoints to be rated)
4. Maintain Parks and Recreation’s land and facilities (six subpoints to be rated)
5. Develop team capacity and organizational culture (four subpoints, very behind-the-scenes stuff)
6. Strengthen organizational systems and structures (five subpoints, not all as behind-the-scenes as it might sound)

From the subpoints above, here’s a few items of interest — Under Goal 1, “fulfill and expand the Olmsted vision and plan” is subpoint C; under Goal 2, “foster environmental engagement” is subpoint D; under Goal 3, “effectively communicate Parks and Recreation services” particularly interests us since it’s still hard to get consistent activity info on the department’s website unless you wade through PDFs of the seasonal catalogs; under Goal 4, subpoints A and B cover maintenance (a sore spot for many) and subpoint C addresses “public safety”; Goal 5 is completely HR-related; the very last subpoint of the very last goal, #6, is “evaluate fees and charges policies for programs and services.”

The comment form and its online counterpart ask you whether you agree or disagree (or are unsure) that the proposed subpoints would help the department reach each specific goal, and then ask for elaboration on what you support in the “goal area” and “what, if anything, is missing?”

Here’s why your opinion really matters — not just so it can wind up in a big binder nobody ever refers to, or buried in online somewhere, but because the Parks Department says input from this process will help them shape priorities for the new Pro Parks Levy that might come before voters this fall (if the City Council and Mayor can work out their differences over it).

That was mentioned several times last night — Whiteford saying at one point, “If we get the chance to ask for more money in a bond or levy measure, this will guide that too.”

Results of these meetings (and the online comments) might guide money decisions sooner, too; the parks managers say they and their counterparts are being asked to look at all the feedback as it comes in and see if there’s anything that can be done with “existing resources” or by shifting resources from someplace that doesn’t seem to be as high a priority with the public. “We are in the budget process right now,” one said. “There is a window right now in the next 4 months or so to go to leadership and say, with this much money, we could accomplish this (public priority).”

In addition to the levy and budget guidance insight, a bit of other news emerged; the “parks policy manager” in the audience talked about a Healthy Parks Initiative to roll out late this summer, with various partnerships plus two Health Fairs, including one somewhere in the “southwest Seattle” area. Franklin talked about more opportunities for “intergenerational” interaction at Southwest CC and mentioned that the Teen Advisory Council is putting on a bingo night for seniors. He also noted, in response to a concern about access to Southwest Pool, that they’re looking at opening it earlier many mornings, perhaps as early as 5:30 am.

Back to the process of finalizing the strategy plan: The public comment deadline is April 30, and here’s what you can do between now and then:

-Go to one of the three remaining West Seattle meetings: Tomorrow @ 2 pm, Delridge Community Center; Monday @ 6:30 pm, Hiawatha Community Center (rescheduled from last Monday); next Thursday, 6:30 pm, High Point Community Center.

-Fill out the online form (April 30 is also the deadline); find it here

-Send your feedback via e-mail to parksplan@seattle.gov

It’s easy to be cynical about meetings and public process like this, but all we can say from having been there is that the Parks Department folks are sincerely interested in what you think their priorities are — they’re under a new Superintendent who’s only been on the job a few months and is also still working to find out what you think his department should be doing — plus, some of the feedback from the first-round meeting we attended really did show up in the draft plan that’s being discussed here. So take a little time to look into the near- and not-so-near future and tell them what you want to see them do.

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