IonHartford

Pope Park facing Northwest (John Groo photo)

The Hartford Parks System has been the topic of much debate in the 2+ years I’ve been on Council.  As Chair of Public Works, Parks and Environment, I’ve received more, uh…feedback than most others, and deservedly so.  The sad condition of our parks has earned us a national distinction as last year we received a Landslide designation from The Cultural Landscape Foundation.  Landslide is designed to educate and thereby rally support at the local, state, and national levels by calling attention to endangered landscapes in communities nationwide.

This isn’t the only national entity that has focused on our Parks.  The Trust for Public Land completed a Park System Report In the Fall/Winter of 2007 with a series of recommendations.  Sadly, none of those recommendations were acted upon.

Even locally we’ve had our own drama.  We’ve had two instances where Developers tried to get park land to do separate development projects.  One was defeated after a long struggle and, unfortunately, the other attempt was successful.  And recently, our Parks and concern for them was among the highest vote getter during the One City One Plan public discussions.  As a result, the Mayor proposed an additional $500k for a Parks Trainee program that as of yet is defined and has formed a Green Ribbon Task Force that should be starting any day now.

But with the major parks going time upon us, the calls and emails have begun regarding conditions and expectations.

I recently toured the Parks System with Hartford’s Parks Superintendent to see the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and found myself surprised at the amount of good there was.  The following is a quick summary of what our Parks System consists of as well as what we, as a community should be expecting when it comes to maintenance.

Parks Maintenance

My tour was on a Thursday and I was shocked to see 90% of the parks I saw mowed and relatively litter free.  My first thought was that John Timm, having a full three days notice about our tour did a major move to get everything mowed…I only wish I had that much pull.  John handed me a complete maintenance schedule of most of the small/medium/big parks and it turns out that most of the mowing is scheduled for Wednesdays and Thursdays, so the timing was right to see nothing but short grass.

A little on the maintenance schedule.  As I said, the mowing on most to all fields is scheduled for the middle of the week.  This is done so that the grass is still fine on for weekend use.  Litter and Trash pickup is normally scheduled for Mondays and Fridays in order to account for the weekend use as well as the weeks worth accumulation on Friday.

One glaring exception is the extra work in some of our Northend fields.  Three years ago when I first took the tour, the big complaint was the conditions of the fields over at Waverly as well as the Cronin soccer fields.  Since then, one person has been assigned to do nothing but mow those two along with the cricket fields at Keney North.  This dedicated staff has cut complaints down to nil at the Council level and allows for three heavily used recreation areas to be optimum all the time.

Unfortunately, that’s the exception to the rule.  The maintenance schedule given to me is a ‘perfect world’ schedule with personnel numbers representing how many people it should take to do the job.  Unfortunately, with a dilapidated staff, those numbers aren’t met and the schedule is always in danger of getting out of flux with backlogs.  One example of this is Elizabeth Park.  It’s slated for four personnel doing 160 hours a week (fulltime) for Rose Garden work and Greenhouse work.  At last count, there is one gardener there working both tasks.  This is where the assistance from the Friends of the west side of Elizabeth Park is crucial and appreciated.

Another exception are the various pocket parks around the City.  One example that comes to mind is Pulaski Mall between Prospect Ave and Main Street.  These little parks all fall under the purview, by contract, to Knox Park.  The also are responsible for the grassy median that runs from Albany Avenue all the way upto the Ridgefield entrance to Keney Park.  I’ll be getting a list of all pocket parks and their maintenance schedule and will try to make that available once I do.

All in all, it looks like we’re off to a good start on the Parks.  Keep in mind that grass can’t get mowed while it’s wet, so mother nature plays a crucial role in the upkeep.  One of the main reasons last year was a killer was due to the larger than average rainfall…which also makes grass grow quicker.

Cemeteries

Cemeteries are a different story and this is where our lack of human resources shows.  Cemeteries suffer due to the ambitious Parks schedule.  They get mowed every three weeks.  With grass getting uncomfortably high at about the fourth day, this makes ripe situations like the one we had a couple weeks ago when people complained about the state of our Soldiers Field in Windsor.  On top of that it was obvious to this untrained eye that while Old North might be on a schedule to get mowed every three weeks, only the areas most easily seen by the public get mowed.  Go to the further corners and the grass is practically covering headstones.  This level of prioritization, while understandable under the circumstance, is unfortunate.  On an encouraging note, Councilman Boucher worked with a cemetery group in 2008 to add cemeteries as an allowable expenditure for the Hartford Parks Trust Fund.  This will hopefully start to bear some fruit to these lands within the near future.

I haven’t mentioned that our tour at Old North Cemetery had us watching over a crew of people dealing with mother nature at her finest.  Old North is over 200 years old, meaning it houses some 200 year old trees.  Well a couple of those behemoths came crashing down during the big tornado warning we had last week.  One took out the top obelisk of a pretty fancy memorial and another snapped six markers in half.

Trimming

Oh, did I mention trimming?  Probably cuz there’s not alot of it.  With a barebones staff, it’s impossible to have someone spend hours on such a task.  So, be prepared to see alot of grass sprouts along fences and other park apparatus.  One classic example are the hedges around Bushnell Park.  Those things practically come out and direct traffic at the rotary but they would take hours and hours to trim.  A move was made to tear them all out and replace with nice period fencing but that was blocked by the Friends of Bushnell Park.  Another would be all the baseball fences at Colt Park…that’s ALOT of trimming.

Playground Apparatus’

With the addition of fancy spaces at Lozada and DeLucco, Hartford has a great mix of fancy new playground apparatus’ thruought the city.  By far, my favorite is Forster Park.  In fact, Forster Park in the Southernmost parts of the City is probably the nices all around park in the City.  Why?  Simple…it caters to all.  It has a spray pool that is on some sort of timer that allows the youngn’s to play while they get wet as well as save water by not being on all the time when no one is there.  It has a basketball court for older men and women…something that other neighborhoods are against as they become gentrified.  It has a kickass ropes apparatus that looks like a big bug and another apparatus that is of the boundless type for kids in wheelchairs and some huge shade tarps for people who want to get out of the sun.  I don’t think there are any other shade thingys like that anywhere in the city.  It has picnic tables and a cool swaying boat thingy that you can get a bunch of kids on and make them throw up.  Kewl!!

The downside to all the new fancy play parks?  All those bright colors and broad plastic is a magnet for kids with huge markers wanting to let people know who they’re going out with this month or what teacher they don’t like.  It’s the same fatalistic “i don’t care” attitude that plagues our inner-city youth that make them write the crap they do in places where younger kids can see, and at some point, read.  Unfortunately, that is one of the ugly’s of the trip…alot of writings.

ok…it’s 2:30am and I’m getting pooped but there’s more.  I’ll post this and finish tomorrow eve.  peace!!