ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 9, 1997 TAG: 9703100084
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: Problems in the parks a special report
SOURCE: DAN CASEY THE ROANOKE TIMES
AT A NEIGHBORHOOD meeting in September, Steve Mullins, Russell Sowers, Charlie Hancock and Cindy Webb challenged Roanoke parks and recreation officials to use the Garden City ball field's filthy bathrooms without gagging.
The community was asking for permission to spend $50,000 of its own money and labor to improve restrooms, fix baseball diamond erosion and build a concession stand and storage shed. Park officials declined to give permission. What happened? The city "built some beautiful steps between the tennis courts and the school," Hancock reported last week. "But we're still getting the runaround on everything else." The Garden City incident is just part of a patchwork assessment of Roanoke's parks that has bubbled forth from moms and dads, football and baseball players, grandparents and nature lovers over the past nine months. Hurt Park resident Norma Smith stood before Roanoke City Council in June to complain about deteriorating conditions and the lack of restrooms at Perry Park. The city fixed some broken benches, but there are no plans for bathrooms. In July, Paula Prince, Polly Bixler, Philip Morgan, Joel Richert and Max Matthews showed up to gripe that the city had failed for more than a decade to replace rotting wooden posts along a road through Highland Park as promised. An embarrassed council ordered wooden guardrails for the park. In September, Northwest resident Freddie Monk asked council for matching funds to help win private grants to improve Northwest's neglected Washington Park. Its bathrooms were cleaned and painted, but the funding request was put on hold. At another meeting, Becky Leonard and Annette Johnson stood with dozens of parents outraged by a parks and recreation decision cutting short the peewee football season - and using the savings to pay for referees' raises and cellular telephones. The season was extended. During a January forum for residents to offer input on future capital projects, Ken Bevins, Deanna Willard, Jeanette Manns, Devva Battle and Trina Cline lamented the scarcity of city parks in general.
"We really don't have anything in our neighborhood," said Bevins, who lives in Northwest's Ridgewood Park area. "No curbs, no sidewalks, no parks - nothing. We'd like a park in Ridgewood Park." Meanwhile, proponents of linear parks have kept up a steady drumbeat for the development of greenways. These pleas might seem to amount to little individually. But as a whole, they indicate a growing awareness that something is awry with the city parks system. "It's not just [Garden City] parks, but the parks, period," said Steve Mullins, a past president of the Garden City Recreation Club. "You can go to any of them and see that there's been years and years of neglect." Northeast resident Jack Hayslett was chairman of a citizens advisory committee that recommended extensive park improvements. The committee report in 1981 launched Roanoke on a park-improvement frenzy that invested millions of taxpayer dollars in first-class sports fields, new downtown parks and face lifts at many neighborhood facilities. "I went to City Council, probably in the late 1980s," Hayslett said. "And I told them that if we didn't include maintenance as part of the parks budget, that we'd be right back where we started. That's where we seem to be." The figures appear to bear him out: Roanoke lags far behind most Virginia cities in per-capita spending on parks and recreation - a condition that has persisted for years. In fiscal 1995, Roanoke spent $29.27 per person on parks and sports programs - 35 percent below the state average for cities and one-third of the $91.18 spent by neighboring Salem. The 1996 Virginia Outdoors Plan, a statewide assessment of recreational opportunities, found that in the Fifth Planning District, "the most acute shortages in the supply of outdoor recreational opportunities exist in the Roanoke/Salem Metropolitan area, where the majority of the population is located. The greatest need is for close-to-home activities requiring special areas and/or facilities, such as swimming, playgrounds, picnicking, volleyball and soccer." Per resident, there is more than twice as much park land on the south side of the city as on the north side. The unequal distribution was recognized as long ago as 1981, but little has been done 1/3 -orrect it. Parks on the south side appear better-tended and in need of fewer repairs than parks on the north side. At least in part, that's because the south side is home to Roanoke's "showcase" parks - the River's Edge sports complex and Elmwood Park. More time and money are spent maintaining those, city officials admitted. "Parks are a key part of our war against drugs - if they're adequate. Otherwise, they're useless," said Martin Jeffrey, director of community development for Total Action Against Poverty and president of Roanoke's NAACP branch. "It looks like from these statistics that we have a problem we need to investigate," Councilman William White said. "I would first want to make sure that these statistics are equitable and fair. If they are, we need to look at what's going on." The city is about to begin another park study similar to its last effort 16 years ago. Proposals were received last month from park consultants. The $100,000 contract is expected to be awarded within weeks. The process, which will include a wide-ranging assessment and many opportunities for public input, should take about eight months, Parks and Recreation Director John Coates said. But some people believe the city should finish work on recommendations outlined in the 1981 report. "Another consultant? I don't know whether we need that or not," Hayslett said. "I reckon we could do that right here in Roanoke without bringing in someone from outside and paying them a lot of money."
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ERIC BRADY THE ROANOKE TIMES. 1. The signs of neglect inby CNBRoanoke's parks include a worn-out basketball goal at Loudon Park
(left). 2. JANEL RHODA THE ROANOKE TIMES a trash-strewn field at
Memorial Park (above) 3. ERIC BRADY THE ROANOKE TIMES and dirty,
decrepit restroom facilities at Washington Park (right, photographed
in November). color. GRAPHIC: Color map by Robert Lunsford.