August 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 39

By Greg A. Weitzel and Andrew J. Mowen
State, regional, county, and local agencies across
the country have been forced to close facilities, cut
staff, end programs, forego routine maintenance,
and delay or cancel capital projects. At the same
time, however, demand for low-cost public park and
recreation opportunities has increased, placing an
additional pressure on park and recreation professionals to pursue strategies to cope with budgetary
losses, staffing cuts, and identify ways to sustainably
continue their services. All this significantly hampers the ability of agencies to provide facilities and
services to improve or maintain the quality of life in
communities across the country.
Park and recreation directors now need to plan
and implement creative and entrepreneurial business and managerial strategies. Some insights into
current recession-coping strategies can be understood by what agencies have done to prepare for
inevitable ebbs and flows in the budgetary environment. Indeed, policies and strategies enacted during the great economic expansion of the 1990s may
have better prepared some organizations to weather the current economic storm.

The Golden Era of Park and
Recreation Services
According to 2003 research by John Crompton and
Andrew Kaczynski, the years 1994-2000 were the
" golden era " of park budgets, based largely upon
the unprecedented growth of the U.S. economy during that period. Annual expenditure increases for
local park and recreation services averaged $595
million (compared to decreases of $13 million from
the period 1976-77 to 1985-1986). However, two consecutive recessions since 2000 likely ended that run
of prosperity for parks and recreation.
In 2000, co-author Greg A. Weitzel conducted a
pre-recession survey of park and recreation administrators to query their perceptions and plans for the
next major economic recession. The study focused
on general business and managerial strategies for
use before, during, or after an economic recession.
As timing would have it, this survey was conducted
at the peak of park and recreation funding and just
before the 2001-2002 recession. This study can provide a basis of comparison of what agencies reported and what they are now doing to cope with their
current budgetary situation.
The sample for the 2000 survey was obtained
from NRPA's Chief Administrators List of approximately 1,300 directors of public parks and recreation agencies throughout the United States. More

than 260 agency directors in 45 states responded.
The majority (79 percent) believed a future recession would cause fiscal problems for their agencies
and 69 percent believed tax revenue allocations
would decrease.
Increasing user fees is one approach to offset
tax revenue shortfalls. However, directors believed
participation in fee-supported programs would
also decline during a recession. Instead, the directors reported that they would pursue numerous
other recession coping strategies, including: seeking input from employees to reduce costs, postponing expansions, media outreach, increasing
grant-writing efforts, performing economic analyses of services, and increasing solicitations for
donations. Strategies less likely to be employed included: reducing programs, hiring more part-time
employees, reducing communication expenses
and activities, decreasing the number of full-time
employees, and leasing out space.

Economic Reality in 2010
Soon after the 2000 survey was completed, the
world changed. Terrorist events, funding wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and two recessions have
helped to diminish budgetary shares for parks and
recreation. To respond to these significant budgetary changes, NRPA and AAPRA collaborated to convene special sessions at the 2009 NRPA Congress
to discuss how recession affects park and recreation services today and what agencies are doing to
cope. Michael Mulvaney of Eastern Illinois University prepared a white paper detailing the findings
of the two sessions (http://www.nrpa.org/uploadedFiles/Explore_Parks_and_Recreation/Research/
FC-WhitePaper-Final.pdf).
Several findings and recommendations were
outlined, including how the recession is affecting
the field of parks and recreation through significant
declines in tax support and other revenues; the opportunity to use this time to improve efficiency and
effectiveness; creating better business models and
new efforts to elicit citizen involvement; increased
use of benchmarking as a means to measure performance; and the need to effectively communicate
the value of parks and recreation.
In addition, NRPA has recently conducted an
Economic Update Survey. The purpose of the survey was to receive an interim report on the economic impact of the economy on parks and recreation
service delivery. Preliminary findings indicate
that most respondents expect additional budget

www.NRPA .ORG

SEPTEMBER 2010

Parks & Recreation 37

August 2010 - Parks & Recreation

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