April 2012 - Parks & Recreation - 8

E D ITO r'S LETTEr

Natural Leaders

L

ast Month in this sPace I exhorted park and recreation administrators to view

themselves as integral players in the betterment of the health and well being
of their communities. Rather than assessing their value in a checklist fashion
of services provided and acres of land managed, a fundamental shift of perspective
is needed. Agencies can achieve more by recognizing and communicating how well
their efforts mesh with their communities. Our cover story this month offers a number
of examples of how municipalities small and large successfully leveraged their conservation efforts into positions of community leadership.
As Nette Compton, NYC Parks director of green
infrastructure told Parks & Recreation, two key lessons emerged from their efforts to implement a
green infrastructure:
" Anything new, people are going to be skeptical
of, even if the old system of the combined sewer
isn't working very well, " Compton says. " They're
very hesitant to buy into anything new wholesale
and so I think the power of demonstration projects
is huge. I'm seeing city after city not being satisfied
with the fact that other cities are doing it and they
need to try it themselves and work it out themselves
to make people comfortable with it. The demonstration approach really helps get more people on
board.
" The multi-agency approach is also incredibly
helpful... the fact that it's citywide and it's incorporating all these different agencies gets everyone at
the table together working together, working out
kinks of how this works to accomplish green infrastructure, " she adds. " You build allies and you learn
what people's concerns are and figure out how to
address them. As you're moving forward past the

demonstration phase, it's something that everyone
can get behind. "
Such thinking-reaching out to fellow agencies
and private partners-has become the wave of the
future. As our cover story demonstrates, it works
in conservation, and we believe it will work just as
ably in many other areas, from public health to public safety.
This is not to say that pursuing every avenue of opportunity will be easy. In a second feature this month
we explore one of the hotter buttons in parks and recreation, the outsourcing of park management to private vendors. " Public? Private? Partnership? " doesn't
draw any conclusions other than the usual need for
open minds. You'll fi nd the topic rife with philosophical and practical considerations, and this pertains to
just one business model for operating parks. In future issues of Parks & Recreation we will be exploring other funding models as they emerge. As always,
we appreciate and value your feedback and suggestions. By visiting www.parksandrecreation.org, you
will be able to more easily register your comments
at the end of the website version of the article.

Philip hayward
editor

6

Parks & Recreation   A P R I L

2 0 1 2    w w w . N R P A . O R G
April 2012 - Parks & Recreation

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of April 2012 - Parks & Recreation
