The Ashland Parks and Recreation Department and Commission — An Independent Analysis

There’s been a lot of discussion on social media regarding the pathetic and disgraceful neglect of the Butler Perozzi Fountain and Lithia Park in General.  Here’s a possibility for your consideration: it’s purely a calculated political ploy. 

APR, being independent of Council oversight, decides what to do with its time and resources.  They decide to let Lithia Park suffer in general because it’s so visible.  Then they claim they can’t maintain it because they don’t have enough money. Thus Lithia Park’s decline becomes their justification to ask for more money.  Endlessly.  Ever since the Citizen’s Budget Committee, they have been lobbying and working nonstop to increase their funding.

They’re ready to ask for a tax levy.  They’re talking about forming a Parks district, with the ability to levy its own additional taxes.  They demand dedicated funding in a budget which is in dire straits, no matter how you spin it.  They are determined to find financing for a new, expanded pool.  They care more about the growth of their department than they do about the needs of the city as a whole, as a community.

Some may say this is a wild conspiracy theory, but it’s just business as usual for the city.  Look at the machinations the council majority is employing to overturn the Community Center decision.  It’s cynical politics at its worst.  Sadly, this is what our city government has degenerated to over the years.

APR needs to attend to its fundamental business, maintaining the extensive Parks system that has been already developed.  Stop spending money and time trying to drum up MORE money.  Stop building that empire.  Maintain what we’ve got now.  Get more efficient, learn to do it with less money.

Parks are not essential, no matter how much APR insists that they are.  It’s just another cheap, political trick: repetition of a distortion.  Their interpretation of the meaning of “essential” is like an image in a funhouse mirror. 

Parks are a wonderful amenity that we all appreciate, enjoy, and support.  They enhance our quality of life.  We all love them.  But until the city is able to fix the budget, the Parks department will have to do more with less.  Police, Fire, Streets… those are the essential services in the general fund that must take priority, no matter how anyone defines “essential”. And then there are the other essential services: water, wastewater, electric which will all require significant additional funding in the years ahead.

Parks will have to prioritize what they do with that smaller budget.  They’ll still have enough funding to do what needs to be done, their protestations to the contrary.  They had better learn to, because there really is no alternative.  Stop expanding.  Stop spending so much staff time scheming to increase funding.  Repair and maintenance are the priority.  Lithia Park needs to come first.

Get to work.

Dean Silver
Ashland