Parks Protection and Maintenance
By Pete Swaim, Republican Candidate for City Council at large
As the city election nears and voters are finally focusing on the issues, it is distressing to see the campaigns bog down in petty politics. Why all the emphasis on Float-Gate, Connie-Gate and Meeting-Gate, when voters really want to hear about who has the best ideas for making Evansville a more secure and successful city?
As a candidate for City Council at Large, I’d like to climb out of the bog and offer up my multi-part plan for securing and maintaining Evansville’s parks. Part One is how to refocus and make the parks a priority once again. Part Two is how to pay for more policing and ongoing maintenance in the parks, and perhaps a big investment for Robert’s Stadium.
Step One is to create a liaison from the Mayor’s Office to the city’s neighborhood associations. This Parks Liaison would be an existing city employee who would have daily contact with our neighborhood associations. These vital groups are a first line of defense in keeping Evansville a beautiful and successful city.
Step Two is to examine how the city handles concessions at city facilities, with an eye toward making the city some money. Let’s engage the public for some substantial ideas at the Parks Board meetings.
Step Three is to increase the flexibility of the city work crews and send them to priority locations, depending on seasonal needs.
Step Four–let’s encourage and recruit university clubs, Greek organizations and even sporting teams to adopt a park. This will build community pride while cleaning and improving the parks. Doing this will help these folks develop closer ties with the community and give them a stake in making it better. And, who knows, it might make more of our 17,000+ college students think about making Evansville their home.
Part Two begins with a close look at what the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau can address with the money from the Innkeeper’s Tax. I think a reasonable and simple argument can be made for tweaking the statute, if necessary, to let this revenue be used to “maintain and protect the city’s recreation areas.†By this I mean the major parks, pools, community centers and other facilities operated or maintained by the city. This additional funding source, plus any available grants, could open the door for the additional police protection needed to secure our investments in these facilities. Off-duty officers could be compensated to patrol the parks during peak problem hours.
Part Two also invites citizen input at the Parks Board about the possibility of selling naming rights to some of the parks. This money could then go directly to the Parks Foundation budget with a major portion dedicated to grants to the neighborhood associations for needed improvements. These projects would be overseen by the Parks Foundation Board.
Besides the obvious impact this would have on maintaining and protecting our neighborhoods, it could ease the burden on taxpayers, and perhaps even lower the tax rate. A reasonable tax rate is one of the first thing developers and other job creators look at.
I hope these ideas can be part of a city-wide town hall discussion. This meeting also should include brainstorming about the many potential uses for Robert’s Stadium. Many ideas have been bandied about in the last several months, but as far as I am aware, none have been seriously explored. Perhaps some additional naming rights could generate the funds needed to cover the utility costs.
It’s high time we all get together in a concerted effort to make Evansville the best Indiana has to offer. What are we waiting for?
Pete Swaim is a retired Vanderburgh County Deputy Sheriff, the former United States Marshal, and former Executive Director of Transportation and Services for the City of Evansville.
