Singing the Budget Blues...and Spotlighting Brilliant Improvisations

Lean times can make for some very creative thinking.  That is the biggest lesson I took away from our April cover story, “Budget Blues.” The deep budget cuts that parks and rec agencies across the country have been confronted with since 2008 have created tough challenges for simple, day-to-day operations.  In researching the story, Editor Phil Hayward, Managing Editor Elizabeth Beard, and I heard tales of skeleton crews, closed parks, and vanished programs.  We talked with agency heads, rank-and-file employees, and foundation directors who are trying to carry on with budgets that simply will not sustain the infrastructures they must steward.

So was the news all bleak?  Far from it—because agencies are adapting, changing, streamlining, and creating new streams of revenue.  In researching best practices for adapting to the budget woes, I began by talking with Bill Koegler of the Oglebay Institute.  Bill had a long list of contacts for individuals at municipal, county, and state levels who are rising to the challenges in front of them with new ways of thinking.  Their methods  help parks to do more than just survive these lean times.

Before talking with Bill, I wondered if the best practices I’d be presenting would amount to a series of fundraising ideas.  The talk I had with him, however, was not about band-aid solutions or appeals to the public to reach deeper into their pockets.  Bill outlined for me the ways in which parks and rec leaders are thinking in new ways about the services they provide—and creating effective partnerships while adopting sustainable financial practices.

What are some of these transformational practices?  If you take a look at our April cover story, you’ll get snapshots of some very creative financial solutions: the nearly limitless revenue-generating potential of park naming rights, the state university model of putting foundations to work, and the kinds of user access fees that simply make sense…just to name a few.  We hope this cover story will be a springboard for further conversation about what is working and what is not.  Look for more posts from Phil, Elizabeth, and me over the next week and a half about lessons learned and questions raised from the “Budget Blues” April cover story.

Maureen Hannan

Senior Editor

Parks & Recreation Magazine