How much should the city of Evansville pay for its parks?

Ryan Reynolds, Evansville Courier & Press
·2 min read
Kids play on the slide at Evansville's Wesselman Park in July. The city is working on a new master plan for its Parks and Recreation Department.

I hope you had a chance to read Courier & Press reporter Sarah Loesch's article this week about the state of Evansville's parks system, and the frustration that sometimes goes along with it.

Parks fall into that vague "quality of life" category for every city in America that's trying to attract new residents while keeping the ones who already live there. Economic, social and environmental factors all feed into it.

In Evansville, like with most cities, there is a mix of good and bad. On the economic side, there's no shortage of retail outlets to find any given widget or service you may need, so that's good. But it's also safe to say that some of our local economic quality-of-life factors, such as utility costs, land on the "negative" side of the ledger.

Parks land in both the social and environmental buckets. They're a place for neighbors to come together, for kids to grow both physically and socially, and for adults to get exercise or just relax. And green space is always at a premium in an urban environment.

But inevitably, the question comes back to that economic bucket: What can we afford when it comes to parks, and how much of our resources should be devoted to not only establishing these spaces, but also maintaining them? As Loesch's article points out, there are plenty of exciting new ventures on the horizon for the city parks program. But what about the money we'll need to make sure the slides at the smaller neighborhood parks are safe? How do we get enough people employed to make sure the grass gets cut and the trash cans are emptied on a regular basis?

And how do we do that all at a time when the cost of everything, from manpower to mowers, is rising?

City budget hearings start in August. It will be interesting to see how the money is divvied up when it comes to this particular quality-of-life issue in Evansville. What do we want from our city's green spaces?

I hope you have a great weekend. As always, thanks for reading.

Ryan Reynolds is interim editor of the Courier & Press. Contact him via email at ryan.reynolds@courierpress.com, or follow him on Twitter, @ryanreynolds.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: How much should the city of Evansville pay for its parks?