In his budget address next week, Mayor Jim Kenney will
outline what could be a signature initiative for his first term: a major push
to repair and improve parks, recreation centers, and libraries in neighborhoods
across the city.
The initiative would involve the city selling $300
million in bonds, plus securing funding from the state and federal governments
and philanthropic foundations that could bring the total investment to around
$500 million over the next few years, Kenney said in an interview on Wednesday.
Kenney has been dropping hints since taking office that his administration
would focus investment on public infrastructure in neighborhoods, touting the
benefits of improving parks and recreation centers in his annual address to the
Chamber of Commerce last week.
On Wednesday, he said the initiative is about giving
communities the public spaces they deserve.
“When we have a football league in South Philadelphia
where we have suburban people come into our communities and look at what our
kids have to play with, and then our kids go out to the suburbs and play in
pristinely manicured fields, it makes us feel like second-class citizens, and
we’re not,” he said. “I think this investment will give people in every
community a sense of equity and fairness, that we care about them and we value them
as citizens.”
The city has struggled to maintain parks and recreation
centers for years, and it shows.
At Vare Recreation Center in Grays Ferry on Wednesday
morning, windows were drafty, patched up with plywood or stuffed with cloth,
and some tiles in the auditorium’s drop ceiling dangled precariously. Some
days, the heat runs full-blast, making it stuffy in the upstairs classroom
where about 40 children attend after-school programs, according to Cecile Kase,
who’s in charge of maintenance at Vare. Other days, it doesn’t even turn on.
“I’m hoping it takes us through our winter, but there’s
been days when we’ve come in here and we had no heat at all,” Kase said.
Philadelphia Parks & Recreation currently runs
on a budget of around $60 million a year. In terms of parks spending relative
to the city’s population, that’s the lowest of the top ten cities in the
country and well below the national average, according to the Kenney
administration.
Given its scope, the program could be a defining feature
of Kenney’s first term. He’s convinced it’s the right priority for investment,
saying it dovetails with efforts to establish universal pre-kindergarten education
and create community schools that also provide health
and child-care services in neighborhoods.
“We have neglected these structures for years,” he said.
“You’re fixing boilers with duct tape, and you’re worrying about the roof
leaking onto the basketball floor and tearing up the floor … People struggle
with trying to maintain their facilities while you’re running a football or
baseball program and you’re playing on a dust bowl.”
Managing Director Mike DiBerardinis, who was commissioner
of Parks & Recreation under former mayor Michael Nutter, began talking with
Kenney about making a big investment in community infrastructure last summer.
At DiBerardinis’ suggestion, PIDC applied for and received a planning grant
from the William Penn Foundation to lay the groundwork for an investment.
PIDC’s planning has been focused so far on collecting and analyzing data
about the city’s public assets, including information about upkeep and deferred
maintenance, to help the city understand how to prioritize investments in
parks, recreation centers, and libraries.
“The city has so significantly disinvested in the
operation of these facilities over time that in a lot of ways this is a big
catch-up on that,” said John Grady, PIDC’s director.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is funding a
smaller second phase of planning for how to invest city money raised through
the bond sales. Both Knight and William Penn could be among a group of
foundations that help fund implementation of the program down the line.
“I think there’s just a lot of overall momentum and
excitement around public spaces and civic assets here that is kind of
historic,” said Patrick Morgan, a program director with the Knight Foundation
who served as deputy to DiBerardinis at the Department of Parks &
Recreation. “The Kenney administration has heard that and is trying to take it
to a whole ‘nother level, frankly.”
Representatives of the two foundations stressed that they
haven’t yet made any commitments beyond the planning phase.
“The money’s not in the bank,” DiBerardinis said on
Wednesday, “but we’re confident that hundreds of millions of dollars of
philanthropic support will be available to this project.”
Since 2013, when the William Penn Foundation drafted a
new grantmaking strategy that emphasizes improvements to public space, the
foundation has committed $92 million toward parks, trails, and library
improvement projects across the region. Where the foundation formerly funded
policy and planning work around public space, its focus has now turned to
implementation.
“We think that all residents of the city, children and
families, deserve access to high-quality public amenities, like high-quality
parks, libraries and rec centers,” said Shawn McCaney, director of William
Penn’s Creative Communities initiative. “And we think those kind of investments
really enhance the quality of life in neighborhoods. But also, we think they
are very important places for civic engagement. They’re the places where
communities gather and, frankly, where community-building happens, and that’s a
huge interest of ours.”
The bonds would likely be sold in three phases, according
to Rob Dubow, the city’s finance director. A sale of city bonds would require
voters to approve the initiative via a ballot question, or they could be sold
through one of the municipal authorities, like PIDC or the Philadelphia
Authority for Industrial Development.
The last time a mayor announced a major bond sale to fund
a new program, it was John Street in 2001, announcing his Neighborhood
Transformation Initiative, which was meant to improve communities by tearing
down vacant houses, removing abandoned cars, and assembling land for future
development. City Council eventually approved a $295 million bond issue for the
initiative. Prior to that, the city issued bonds to help build the new stadiums
at the sports complex in South Philadelphia. The city also sells bonds
routinely to fund basic capital expenditures.
Dubow said the city would sequence the bond sales to avoid
doing one major bond issue. The city’s bond
rating, which improved while Dubow was finance director under
Nutter, makes it cheaper to sell the debt.
“But it’s also investment in our own infrastructure,
which is the right thing to borrow for,” Dubow said. “We’re investing in our
assets.”
“Not in two professional sports teams,” Kenney chimed in.
The proceeds of the bond sales, which will need City
Council’s approval, would be administered through the managing director’s
office. The planning work funded by Knight and William Penn is meant to help
the city get a jumpstart on how to invest once the money is in hand.
“A big piece of this is about how we collect data and how
we prioritize,” said Brian Abernathy, the deputy managing director under
DiBerardinis. “I think equity is going to be a part of our prioritization. Past
investment is going to be about how we prioritize. The population and the
context of where the rec center lives is going to be a big piece of what this
is. There [is] absolutely pretty solid evidence that rec centers in very strong
neighborhoods have been very well taken care of, and those in not-so-great
neighborhoods haven’t been. We’re going to try and address that.”
City Council President Darrell Clarke acknowledged that
he’s had conversations with the Kenney administration about investing in parks
and rec centers, but that he was waiting to see specifics of how the funds
would be spent. He said he agrees that the current level of funding for
those facilities is insufficient.
Bobby Henon, Council’s majority leader, said that the
Kenney administration appeared to be committed to getting Council members’
input on implementing the investment.
“Of course the district councilmembers know their
districts, they know their rec centers, they know their communities …” Henon
said on Thursday morning. “I think working with the mayor on this would be a
great partner opportunity. And I think the mayor’s office, the mayor himself,
has indicated that, ‘We want to hear from you, district councilmembers. We want
to hear from you and your community to see what is your vision, and the
priority order.’”
DiBerardinis said that some parks, recreation centers,
and libraries could start seeing money for improvements next year.
“A lot of times, city projects in the past have gone the
way of politics and the way of other things and you never got the value you
intended to get,” Kenney said. “You want to talk about legacy or reputation?
That’s on me. For this not to be done right is on me personally, because that
means I fell down.”
Source: Plan
Philly
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