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A March 13 presentation by Portland Parks & Recreation to the Portland City Council highlighted the stakes of cutting back recreational programming and daily park maintenance across the city’s community facilities and developed parks. They might not be perfect—some parks’ public restrooms are closed at length, while some community centers’ deferred repairs are part of a more than half-billion-dollar maintenance backlog—but Portland’s nature spaces and community programming remain high on the list of reasons people enjoy living here. If the bureau managing some of Portland’s most beloved assets takes the brunt of budget cuts when Mayor Keith Wilson presents his proposed budget to the City Council on May 5, what could that mean for Portlanders?
City Councilor Steve Novick consulted former parks director Zari Santner via email Tuesday, March 11, to understand what would happen if a park’s daily maintenance were cut entirely. These services include trash and graffiti removal, arboreal tasks like tree care, restroom cleaning, maintaining lighting and irrigation systems, and monitoring equipment like playground structures, picnic tables and benches. Portland’s parks receive care based on factors like size and need.
“Without these activities, Mt. Tabor’s restrooms will be covered with graffiti, broken windows and moss sodden, or collapsing roofs,” Santner responded in an email Novick read at the meeting. “Picnic tables and benches rotten or graffiti covered, grass and weeds so tall that could become fire hazard in summertime and filled with garbage.…Playgrounds will be unsafe for children to play…after a mere couple of years of neglect…it will cost so much more to renovate the parks and open for use.”
Novick later told WW:
“I am worried that a sort of instinctive reaction might be, well, the natural area parks are not public safety, and we haven’t heard a lot of people coming to community sessions screaming about maintaining them, so maybe we should just let those slide. So, frankly, I’m kind of paranoid about what I see as a threat to parks maintenance, and that’s why I keep on yelling about it and why I asked Zari to paint a picture of what ending parks maintenance actually means.”
Parks & Rec’s presentation set Mayor Wilson and the City Council up for a dilemma of choosing between two priorities: “parks and recreation” and “parks and nature,” pitting natural space maintenance against community-based programming.
Councilor Dan Ryan is a staunch supporter of Portland’s recreation centers and the activities they host, among them the city’s 11 indoor and outdoor public pools. He also enjoys natural spaces, but looks to the Portland Clean Energy Fund to help fill that side of the bureau’s budget.
“There’s a lot you can do with volunteerism, and they’re pretty resilient,” Ryan says. “PCEF continues to provide some revenue for that, and we can continue to look at PCEF to provide care for our nature.”
Ryan believes there are better solutions than pitting natural spaces and community programs against one another, telling WW that reducing administrative and managerial staff—which Parks & Rec did not highlight at the March 13 meeting—might have to be an option. He stressed the importance of keeping Portland attractive to families.
“Families are the Fortune 500 company of Portland, and if we keep losing them, it’s not going to be pretty,” he says.
Until Mayor Wilson presents his budget, there are still plenty of things Portlanders should feel empowered to do if they want to express how much the city’s parks and recreational offerings mean to them.
USE THESE THINGS…
The weather’s getting reliably nicer, so along with visiting any of Portland’s nearly 8,000 acres of public park spaces throughout the city, community centers offer athletics for people of all ages, abilities and interests. The St. Johns Community Center, for example, has pickleball, basketball, skating and a youth gym, while the Montavilla Community Center has zumba, yoga and tai chi (along with basketball and pickleball). Multnomah Arts Center offers classes in many mediums and shows work by professional artists in a space that might feel more welcoming than traditional white box art galleries.
…AND TELL SOMEONE
Letting facilities managers and elected officials know what needs improvement and what works well goes a long way, even when responses don’t come from the top of the ladder. The Parks & Rec meeting noted a survey indicating that more Portlanders have visited nature spaces than have used community centers, but Ryan still advocated on behalf of seniors enrolled in aqua aerobics classes at the city’s pools in part because of their passionate advocacy for what’s become part of their regular routine. According to parks spokesman Mark Ross, you can direct feedback to the City Council through the city’s budget comment and testimony form: portland.gov/budget/budget-comment-and-testimony.
BE A FRIEND OF A PARK
This doesn’t mean simply not littering or starting forest fires (you shouldn’t do either anyway). Auxiliary partner groups often step in to take on a park’s upkeep. Novick says it’s unlikely that partner organizations could make a big enough dent in the city’s budget, but he does point out a prominent example of a partnership making an impact in another city.
“To be pie in the sky about it, in New York City, the city hasn’t paid for the upkeep of Central Park in decades,” Novick says. “There’s the Central Park Conservancy, which is a privately funded entity that takes care of Central Park, so I’ve kind of wondered, does Portland have any parks that are iconic enough that the local rich people would band together and take them over if we stopped paying for them?”
In Portland, Friends of Laurelhurst Park, for instance, keeps up the off-leash dog parts of the park along with path work and swapping out invasive plants for native species. You could join an existing group, or if your favorite park doesn’t have one, you could look at organizing friends and neighbors to start one together. The various organizations work with the Portland Parks Foundation to communicate their needs to the city. See if there’s a group in your neighborhood: portland.gov/parks/nature/ppr-friends-groups.
TALK TO MAYOR WILSON
“If Parks doesn’t show me that they’re actually concerned about families leaving Portland, and if the mayor and [city administrator] don’t show me they care about our small businesses by cutting police further, then I’ll vote no [on the budget],” Ryan says. “We have to stop the exodus and look at two metrics over the next five years: that our storefronts and leases go up, and that our school enrollment goes up, and when you see that happening, Portland is healthy again.”
Mayor Wilson is still coming up with the proposed budget he will bring to the City Council for approval. Until then, nothing is certain. “Portlanders have actively shared their priorities for our city’s budget by attending listening sessions, calling, and writing to my office about the programs that matter most to them and their families,” Wilson tells WW. “My budget proposal will carefully reflect this input to ensure we’re funding services that align with community needs.”
You can tell the mayor your thoughts at mayor@portlandoregon.gov.