If you want to sell taxpayers and private donors on supporting public parks, it's good strategy to trot out artist's of restored lakes and bridges, pavilions shading lively family gatherings and maybe idyllic scenes of big trees in spring bloom.
Trotting out schematics of piping systems, circulating pumps and piles of stinky mulch is not such good strategy. The truth is, maintenance isn't very sexy.
But it takes both — restoring infrastructure features and then maintaining them — for parks to pulse with vitality and positive community spirit. Parks that work pull together people and symbolize a city's sense of identity and confidence. More practically, they even help stabilize and build value in surrounding residential and commercial property.
People are also reading…
Ìý
The city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ is poised to act this week on a pair of proposals that would inject tens of millions of dollars of vitality into dozens of large and small neighborhood parks from Fairground and O'Fallon on the north to Carondelet, Tower Grove and Willmore on the south to Fountain and Ivory Perry in the central corridor to the brightest jewel of our region: Forest Park.
It is a complex but ingenious proposition built around two separate bond issues and an expansion of the city's ongoing partnership with the private, non-profit group , which steered the initial phase of Forest Park restoration that was completed in 2003. The overall plan also would serve as a modest but welcome direct economic stimulus with the potential for more significant indirect economic impact.
Ìý
The revised proposals will be presented to the Board of Aldermen on Friday. The aldermen should support them. They offer a forward-thinking opportunity to deliver benefits to residents in all parts of the city for years to come.
The proposal for the parks other than Forest Park is fairly straightforward. Scores of them have decayed as a result of maintenance and capital spending that was deferred for years because of budget pressures. The new proposal would have the city issue $34 million in revenue bonds to pay for capital improvements and catch-up maintenance at parks throughout the city.
The bond money would concentrate the economic impact of the projects and deliver parks improvements to residents within three years. The bonds would be paid back with portions of the revenue from two sales taxes that voters previously approved for parks projects and from general revenue.
Ìý
The Forest Park proposal has more moving parts. Forest Park Forever would buy $30 million in city revenue improvement bonds. The city would use the proceeds to pay for capital improvements in Forest Park. Forest Park Forever would use the city's annual $2 million in debt-service payments for ongoing park maintenance.
City Comptroller Darlene Green has suggested that the bonds would put public ownership of Forest Park at risk. But Forest Park Forever officials told us that special language is being added to the legislative proposal that will explicitly rule out the park as collateral.
Another key element to the deal is Forest Park Forever's campaign to raise $100 million in private funds for its Forest Park Endowment. Income from the invested funds would generate another $4 million per year for the park's substantial maintenance needs.
Ìý
Forest Park Forever said it already has $43 million pledged toward that campaign. However, $25 million of that amount, promised by a donor whose name has not been disclosed, is conditioned on the city passing a bond proposal before the end of 2011. Mayor Francis Slay is on record as enthusiastically supporting both bond proposals.
The balance of the maintenance budget would be covered by $3.8 million paid each year by Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Forest Park Forever under of a 2007 lease extension on parkland east of Kingshighway and another $2.7 million in general street maintenance, utility services and security provided by the city.
Ìý
It's rare for governments to devise such innovative partnerships to restore and preserve public assets that are vital to urban life. One need only look to ºüÀêÊÓƵ County to see a dismal example of a government using parks as cudgels in political power games.
The aldermen should not let this opportunity slip through their fingers.