Join me at South Shore Park Pavilion on Wednesday at 6PM to voice your support for Milwaukee County Parks!
Assembly Representatives Christine Sinicki, Jon Richards and Senator Jeff Plale are having a public forum to discuss regional parks and transit funding. The focus will be the impact of the 2009-10 state budget on Milwaukee County parks and transit.
As you may have heard, the budget the Governor signed last week does not include a dedicated and secure funding source for the Milwaukee County Parks. You may have also heard that the proposed budget from County Executive Scott Walker cuts the County parks budget by $8.6 million in 2010. That’s a reduction of nearly 33% for 2010!
This will make the Park system a shell of it former self and will drastically cut your access to public parks and the quality of the park system as a whole.
It’s time to act.
I’d ask you to join me tomorrow at South Shore Park Pavilion (a County Park!) at 6:00pm to let your elected officials know that you want a dedicated funding source for the Milwaukee County Parks.
Let them know how important OUR public spaces are to you, your family, and our community as a whole.
Let them know it’s time to act to protect our public parks.
Thanks for your time, and I look forward to seeing you there.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
Wish I could be there, but my son will be enjoying the park system playing baseball at that same time. Give ‘em hell, though! I am absolutely appalled at how our Forefathers’ great legacy of the Grand Necklace of Parks and the rest of our park system is being neglected to the point of ruination.
I think that Sue Black, the Milwaukee County Parks Director, might disagree with your assessment that the parks are at the point of ruination. The Milwaukee County Parks are one of four finalists for the 2009 National Gold Medal for Excellence in the Park and Recreation Management Program in a large-city system.
I talk to Sue on a regular basis. We all know what kind of shape the parks are in, and she’d be the first to say that the parks need a dedicated funding source.
That award by the way is for the management of the park system. Management being the key word. Sue and her staff, in combination with groups like the Park People, have done an amazing amount of work with very scarce resources.
We used to win awards just on our parks alone, but $300 million in deferred maintenance is taking it’s toll, and we’re no longer up for those kinds of awards.