Preserve Our Parks Calls for Fair Funding of Our Public Parks
October 30, 2024 | Topics: Issues
Press release by Preserve Our Parks
Photography of Milwaukee County Parks by Eddee Daniel
Preserve Our Parks (POP) is the primary non-profit advocacy group for Milwaukee County parks. We shout, Viva la Volunteers! But POP is disappointed to see yet another reduction in tax levy support of our parks in the proposed budget, especially since POP along with many Friends groups supported the county request for additional sales tax last year, hoping to see an improvement in parks funding. While the county partially made up for this decline with added revenue from its enterprise funds, this work drains park staff from ecological and horticultural projects in parks.
The Parks Dept. is looking to aggressively add more park friends and volunteers, the new goal is to increase volunteers to 1,300, increase Friends groups to 60 with 24,000 volunteer hours. POP applauds these volunteers, but this is no substitute for fair funding of parks.
“The Oak Leaf Trail is the most attended sporting facility in our county, and it is free and open to all users. Yet projects to support private, for-profit sporting teams are given priority for funding capital projects,” stated Patricia Jursik.
Last year $2.5 million was withheld by the State for the Stadium District to continue until 2030. In addition, 4 million per year is mandated to pay debt service on Fiserv Forum. The county as an arm of State Government is forced to pay these contributions over any objection of our local leaders. It took quite a bit of nerve for these legislators to withhold shared revenue and then come into our county for the RNC convention, use our public parks and even close them to the public that pays and supports these assets. All this while the state sits on a $5 Billion surplus, revenue largely collected from SE Wisconsin while underfunding state mandates to county government.
POP has been building a coalition of park, environmental and waterway groups to advocate for dedicated funding of our beleaguered park system. There is overwhelming support for dedicated funding. “Our parks have a well-documented capital deficit for repair and maintenance of park infrastructure including trails, roads and pavilions, of over $500 million.” Jursik stated.
POP asks the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors to restore tax revenues of $375,000, to equal last year’s tax levy support, and to add more capital projects to the Parks Capital Budget to begin addressing the backlog of projects. It is time to stop this erosion of funding for our public parks.
Note: The featured photo at the top is of the Milwaukee River Greenway in Milwaukee.
For more information or questions contact POP Board Chair Patrcia Jursik: pjurik47@gmail.com; 414-732-1816.
The Natural Realm blog and A Wealth of Nature website are a project of Preserve Our Parks. Eddee Daniel is a POP board member and Project Director of A Wealth of Nature.