[Durham INC] let's help the City with ideas...

[TheOcean1 at aol.com]

Randy is right when he says, "Most of the older parks had something for the 
 park caretaker to live in. Now City services (or contractors) take care of 
the  parks."
 
Sometimes the progressive step is backwards. Wonder how the costs  compare, 
live in/on site caretaker VS City services. Does the City have a  specified 
budget for each park's maintenance? I'm sure they have line items, and  can 
tell us that xx% is budgeted for programs, it would be interesting to at  
least know the total maintenance budget including equipment and staff.
 
Bill    

 
In a message dated 3/6/2010 9:36:54 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
rwpickle at gmail.com writes:

I eliminated (as Bill put it) my park because at times, I refer to it as  
Lake Beverly because it is all under water. You can have a canoe rental  
business in my front yard. I am much more familiar with the parks I mentioned  
than the others. But I have personally visited around 50 of the ones we have; 
 some more frequently than others. 
There are 7 parks withing 2 miles of where I live. Does that seem like too  
many? One is as Mike mentioned, the size of a vacant house lot.  Within 4 
miles of where I live, it jumps to 13 parks. It's almost as if every  
neighborhood at one time had it's own park. 
The bath house at Northgate functions as seasonl. They turn the water  off 
sometime in Oct. and on again after the chance of freezing is over. It's  
tied to the dog park water system, so we don't have water for the dog park  
during this time frame either... 
The house at Northgate Park that Bill referred to is uninhabitable. As I  
was told, it has a fuzzy covering of mold throughout. Maybe you could gut it  
to the framework and sort of start over, but where are the funds coming 
from  to do that? Forest Hills has an apartment attached to the clubhouse. 
Typically  it has been rented to Police officers, but I think it's vacant now. 
Duke Park  has one as well. It's the house the golf course maintenance 
division operates  out of (below the bath house). Most of the older parks had 
something for the  park caretaker to live in. Now City services (or contractors) 
take care of the  parks. 
Another desirable park for redevelopment is at the end of Garrett Rd. It  
mainly houses the tennis courts that the school system uses. Most of that  
would be prime commercial development with what has been built around it. It,  
like many of our parks, are not "neighborhood" parks. Most of the 
visitors/use  they get has to travel there by car/bike/bus/etc. There's no reason 
they  couldn't just drive to the next closest park instead... 
Bill's right. Don't send your ideas to. Just post them here. perhaps it  
will be like the open source software conversation where someone else on the  
list has some additional thoughts (one way or the other). Most of this list 
is  involved in this community and gets to see first hand what seems to work 
and  what doesn't. Perhaps what doesn't work is a corner we can improve 
upon  (budget-wise or otherwise). 
RWP
27 Beverly 



_______________________________________________
Durham  INC Mailing  List
list at durham-inc.org
http://www.durham-inc.org/list.html


-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed