Paving over parkland: cash-strapped communities are trading green space for greenbacks.

Residents in Novi, Mich., camped in their cars last September for the chance to put bids on homes slated for construction. The Detroit suburb's latest housing development partially sits on 95 acres of verdant land previously belonging to the city's largest community park.

The park was worth about $64 million to the city--enough to bail officials out of a settlement judgement. "The land transfer met basically the balance of the obligation as part of the lawsuit the city lost," says Clay Pearson, Novi assistant city manager.

Nationwide, local governments are using public parkland as legal tender. With impending budget cuts putting a strain on already strapped services, pristine parkland, unused open space and lush forest land are seen as financial saviors.

In the mid 1990s, Sandstone Associates sued Novi, alleging that its development failed because the city could not build an access road in time. Sandstone won its lawsuit and was awarded $30 million. But appeals and court interest fees caused the dollar figure to balloon to $72 million. It was at this time that city officials began talks to transfer about 05 percent of the 440-acre North Novi Park to help lower the cash amount, according to the Friends of Novi Parks, a citizen-driven group formed to help maintain parks and recreation in Novi.

But the park was not the only solution to Novi's financial woes. As reported in the Detroit Free-Press, Sandstone's lawyer offered city officials less money if the city would pay the settlement with bond money, but the city declined the offer because it would have cost Novi residents an estimated $50 to $60 million. The public was never made aware of this option. Pearson says the bond was not a viable option. A series of meetings were held for discussion and public comment that included the planning commission and city council.

It was during these meetings that Novi successfully re-classified 95 acres of its parkland as surplus property. Once the parkland designation was taken off the city's master plan in June 2002, the Novi City Council transferred the 95 acres and $7.7 million in insurance money to Sandstone to settle the lawsuit. This transfer depleted Novi residents of 10 percent of the city's parkland. "We had an obligation to meet in terms of the lawsuit that the city defended and lost, and it was our responsibility to find an appropriate settlement," Pearson says.

Although Novi is 26 miles from Detroit, it is experiencing the same open space problems of the nearby metropolis. With more people moving in, green space is targeted by city officials and developers alike.

"Parks are the jewel of a city's public space," says Kathy Madden, vice president of the national non-profit, Project for Public Places (PPS). Madden does not believe a parkland should ever be converted into a cash cow. "If we start selling off those places to anybody, those are lost opportunities for our communities to come together." Madden's group works locally with volunteers and park officials to help protect and convert run-down urban spaces into public parks and promenades.

As budgets continue to shrink for park and recreation departments, private groups emerge to fill in the budget gap by offering volunteer services such as cleaning crews, maintenance help and grants. This level of public assistance helps prevent public spaces from becoming parking lots.

"The kinds of parks that are rarely touched have groups that are associated with them and use them and organize around them," says Jason Kibbey, director of Defense of Place. His California-based group is another private organization filling the gap that budget deficits created. Defense of Place offers assistance to communities to protect public lands from being sold. Since its inception seven years ago, Defense of Place has prevented the sale of thousands of acres of dedicated parkland in California.

"The specific problem of communities selling off their parks is emblematic of a bigger issue," Kibbey says, adding that he has noticed more cases sprouting up within the last three to four years. "There has been a shift away from thinking of parks and open spaces as the commons that you hold off on, to something that anyone can sell or get rid of."

A recent Defense of Place success story involved fending off 10 tracts of land in Millbrae, Calif. In February 2004, the Millbrae City Council proposed selling property that had been deeded to the city as protected open space and eventually became a public park. The property instead was described in a Jan. 13, 2004, agenda report as "Buildable residential parcels with ... no great impact with respect to loss of community open space, little impact to the ongoing viability of the Spur as an open space asset, little significant impact on existing residences or existing views."

Kibbey's legal team countered by explaining to the city the implications of selling protected open space. Five months after the proposal, the city chose to pass a fire assessment to pay for its budget deficit. "The problem in Millbrae was that literally the thinking was that the parks were an extension of their line of credit and that's the kind of thinking that's really the problem," Kibbey says.

Groups like Defense of Place can only help if they are made aware of impending problems. Unfortunately, there is no way to monitor what happens nationwide, because every state has its own definition of public land, says Tim Ahern, spokesman for the Trust for Public Land (TPL).

Ahern's group is currently working on a national database, but is running into delays due to different jurisdictions' coding of open space, which can mean anything from a parkway to ball-fields. "If a developer buys 1,000 acres of farmland, puts houses and stores on 650 acres, puts 150 acres into a park and puts the other 200 acres into golf courses, how would one count the golf courses?" Ahern says. "And just to really foul it up, some jurisdictions count cemeteries as open space."

An ongoing tally of how many acres of open space exists with subcategories for parks and recreational use would be one way to keep track of the nation's public lands. However, residents who have a grasp on the issues in their community are also a powerful tool.

Such was the case in Richmond, Calif. During a routine city council meeting in April 2004, a list of "surplus lands" was put on the agenda to be considered for sale to help shrink the city's $35 million budget deficit. But some of the properties on that list included land that was initially set aside by the city to be developed into parkland. It was a member of the city's recreation and park commission who recognized the street address of the proposed parcel and called it to the attention of the city council.

"There is a very clear difference in general between surplus lands and parks," Kibbey says. "If you have an abandoned lot that was transferred over to the city for defaulting, and it's turning basically into a trash heap, there's no reason the city shouldn't sell it. It's not a park; it's not being used as such." (See sidebar on "Pocket Park Problems"). But, when a city begins applying the same measures used to consider excess land as surplus to "parkland," then the situation becomes complex and potentially illegal, Kibbey says. "The general trend of trying to measure parks and open space in that way is really off base."

Yet the definition of excess land is open to interpretation, as is the case in Maryland. In April 2003, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich asked Maryland's state agencies to conduct an internal assessment of their assets to determine if anything could be considered surplus land for possible sale. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) identified 2,900 acres, or 1 percent, as excess that could be sold to help curb the state's looming budget problems. Forty-eight percent of the acres are either state parkland or purchased with matching grants from the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Some of the land listed was originally bought for Maryland's Program Open Space, which is funded from a one-half of one per cent real estate transfer tax enacted nearly 40 years ago. This dedicated fund for open space conservation has protected nearly 400,000 acres since its inception.

Parcels were placed on this excess property list if they fulfilled the following criteria:

* Isolated or detached from the main land because of roads, rivers, etc.;

* Poor access or landlocked;

* Boundary disputes with neighbors; encroachments or right-of-way conflicts;

* Has a long-term lease agreement;

* Near a population that could better serve the needs of the land;

* Adjacent owners have expressed interest in acquiring the land; and

* "Relative high cost of management considering level of public benefit."

"I don't think it was only for budget purposes," says Gene Piotrowski, director of DNR Regional Planning. "Yes, we're in tough times, but from a standpoint of asset management, it's like any business--looking at what it owns, what it needs, what's being utilized well, what's not being utilized well and to deal with it in different ways."

The assessment was done without public input, and there are no foreseeable plans to take any of the properties off the list, says Piotrowski. While there are no plans to sell any of the land to fulfill Maryland's $1.8 billion budget deficit, offers are always made to Maryland from housing and commercial developers. But, none of the properties listed as excess have been forwarded to the Department of Planning for assessment and review.

The nine-step process requires the planning department to review any property for its environmental and developable value. During this process, public input is sought from state, local and elected officials. DNR's list of potential excess properties is the first step of the process. Once DNR formally signs off on any of the properties to the planning department for review, the process begins. According to Chuck Gates, spokesman for the Department of Planning, before the properties could ever be sold, they must be reviewed by the Board of Public Works.

"They're valuable assets and there's money to be gleaned from the sale of that land and the use of those funds," says Jackie Carrera, director of Baltimore, Md.-based Parks and People. "What we as an open space community need to do more of is organize and become a more formal constituency that has a voice that speaks up when something like this happens so that it won't be the first thing the administrators go to because it's an easy target--land doesn't speak, there is no constituency."

Like Kibbey in California, Carrera is interested in helping the local park and recreation departments through private donations, grants and manpower. "The park department has to have more than one solution for generating revenue beyond just selling parkland," Carrera says.

On the other side of the country, there is a parks department accomplishing just that. King County in Washington State transferred 21 parks and 10 pools to nearby cities and incorporated areas due to budget problems. About 15 cities, including Seattle, now manage the parks and pools that exist within their boundaries, rather than King County using its budget to maintain these sites. The transfer took place during the 2003-2004 fiscal year, and subsequently saved the county $7 million. "It wasn't like the public lost any park amenities," says Suzanne Little, director of King County Parks and Recreation Division. "The public's perception probably didn't change."

In 2002, King County Executive Ron Sims appointed a task force to assess King County's parks and recreational facilities after announcing that the parks division's budget would be cut from $25 million to $15 million. About 20 ideas were put forth by the task force including selling naming rights, leasing parkland to businesses and selling parts for development.

The main reason for the downsizing is a shift in general fund allocation, says Tom Koney, assistant director for King County Parks and Recreation Division. Rather than receive the majority of its budget from tire county's general fund, the parks division was left to fend for itself.

"There's a legacy of real strong commitment to parks and tire growth of parks and the regional trail system," says Koney. "This really was gut-wrenching for everybody involved and everyone was trying to figure out a way to keep the park system open and available to the public and not tear down what had been built up over 20, 25 years."

King County now is more focused on its regional recreational facilities and park systems. The county still manages more than 25,000 acres of land and 200 miles of regional trails. Many of the options introduced by the task force are in the process of being implemented. Naming rights are continuing, and the county recently allowed Subway Restaurants to lease space in one of its aquatic centers. The county also implemented a $1 parking fee in one of its popular parks, which generated $295,436 in 2003. "We are way more aggressive in terms of operating sort of little bit more on a business model," says Koney.

With the help of a four-year levy; which contributes about $11 million annually, King County Parks and Recreation Division can maintain its operations budget without having to transfer any more of its remaining 179 parks and five pools.

Koney says the transformation for King County parks happened within the last two years, when a series of tax cuts were implemented on a state and local level. But he says the direct support from the public has allowed King County to stay in business. "You're seeing people go more toward fee for service. There's less comfort in having an entire pot of money and having it divvied up by elected officials as opposed to people sort of paying for the services that they used," Koney says.

King County is just one example of how counties nationwide seek to protect their existing open spaces.

"As a citizen of that city, you actually own that land, and you are entitled to use it, enjoy it and protect it," says Kibbey; who believes educating the public about its stake of ownership is the key to preventing parkland from being sold for development.

As Carrera from Parks and People, Ahern from the Trust for Public Land, and many other private activist groups will agree with, pruning assets from the budget should be a consideration, but should never occur at the expense of the public's benefit. "You can't put a monetary price on it," says Kibbey. "You just can't measure it in terms of dollars and cents."

RELATED ARTICLE: Pocket park problems.

In November 2004, residents of Missoula, Mont., passed an ordinance allowing their city council to sell "non-conforming parkland" or "nonfunctional pocket parks." A pocket park is a strip of leftover land less than one acre that was dedicated to the parks department for maintenance and management.

Many of the parks were given to the city as part of a state-mandated open space requirement for housing developments. Because no comprehensive park plan existed, developers were given no guidelines as to what would be considered appropriate open space. As a result, Missoula owns land that can be found behind backyards, isolated from public areas or separating private property.

"We have these tiny little, non-functional pocket parks that are dotted throughout the city that don't function as a neighborhood park," says Jacquelyn Corday, author of the ordinance and open space program manager for the city park department. "They should have never been accepted in the first place. We had no standards; we had no master park plan to say what a neighborhood park should look like."

Just this past year, Missoula drafted its first Master Parks Plan. It was decided by members of the park board that these pocket parks needed to be addressed before the plan would be implemented. "What happened is the parks department had to spend a disproportionate amount of money to be taking care of these little pocket parks, and it was disproportionate to the amount of use and benefit to the neighborhood," Corday says.

Before drafting the ordinance, Corday researched other communities with similar guidelines. Oversight and public input were high priorities. Corday's process addressed these priorities.

--Before a property was to be listed as a pocket park, the parks department would review it for any value or opportunity.

--No properties would be considered pocket parks if there were no other neighborhood park available within a half-mile radius.

--The property would be evaluated by the citizen-led park board, which would also rely on an evaluation sheet before making their decision about the pocket park. (See Chart #1 below).

--Any money received from the sale of pocket parks must be used to acquire parkland or improve existing parkland.

"When you look at overall, what our mission is, and our responsibility to citizens overall, we have to look at, 'Hey, we're spending X amount of dollars on cutting weeds on this, and it's not benefiting anybody except a couple of people living right next to it,'" Corday says.

Chart 1. How to Define Non-Conforming
Parkland or Pocket Park

(Rate the following from 0 (no) to 4 (yes) points)

Neighborhood Park Function

Is it or can it be used as a neighborhood gathering place?

Is it large enough and appropriate for active recreation?

Is it a safe place for children to play in terms of visibility?

Does it have good access--both non-motorized and vehicle?

Is it centrally located to the neighborhood?

Would the expenditure of funds to improve the park be justified by
the number of people that it will serve?

Other values that may justify retention of the parkland

Does it serve as a visual greenspace of community-wide importance?

Does it or can it serve as a significant wildlife corridor or provide
some other important natural function or environmental education value?

Does it or can it serve as an important neighborhood connector trail?

Does it contain significant cultural or historical value?

Is this park needed to meet the desired level of service for this area?

A score of 10 or more indicates that the park should be retained.

A score of 9 or less indicates that it should be transferred out of
city ownership