We’re County Award Recipients! 2017 Bill Thomas Outstanding Park Service Volunteer Award

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Friends of Aurora Highlands Parks

www.FriendsofAHparks.org
FoAHP receives the Bill Thomas
Outstanding Park Service Volunteer Award
On April 24, 2018, the Friends of Aurora Highlands Parks was awarded the Bill Thomas Outstanding Park Service Volunteer Award. As one Dept. of Parks staff member called it, “The Oscars” of park awards.

We are grateful for the recognition and hope that our message of inclusive parks, stemming from inclusive and transparent community engagement, are someday realized. It would be the greatest honor if in fact our work was recognized with the County rebalancing our parks for everyone’s uses and for our community of Aurora Highlands / Pentagon City.
The Arlington County Board presented the Bill Thomas award to the Chair of FoAHP, Kari Klaus, who accepted the award on behalf of the group with FoAHP supporters in the audience. 
Klaus’s acceptance speech,

“Thank you to the award committee, the Park and Recreation Commissioners, the staff who organized the award’s presentation and reception, to the Friend’s group co-Chair, Stacy Meyer, who did a fantastic job working on  the Nelly Custis park project, and all the group’s supporters in Aurora Highlands and beyond.

Over the last few years I’ve heard that because Arlington’s population is growing, so is the demand for recreation. Well, that’s only a small part of the picture. The truth is that as Arlington’s population grows, so does the demand for everything. We see this in our schools, our infrastructure, transportation, but we also see there is a strong need  for natural parks and open spaces.

However, when it comes to open and natural park spaces there is a clear imbalance on fulfilling this need in many ways. When we look at Virginia Highlands Park, 75% of the park’s open space is dedicated to recreation-only spaces.

When we look at how our open and natural space parks are funded, there is a clear imbalance. Over $3M went towards sports facilities’ maintenance at Virginia Highlands Park and not $1 to maintaining or improving open and natural spaces with plantings and trees, benches, picnic tables, community gathering spaces and more. But the greatest imbalance the Friends group has seen, has simply been ensuring that all residents have an inclusive and transparent discussion with the County about our park spaces.

You see most people enjoy going to parks —  they are meant for the public. Therefore we believe that they should also be created by the public so that they can be equally enjoyed by everyone.

On behalf of the Friends group, thank you for the award; we greatly appreciate it.”

Read more about the work of FoAHP in the Bill Thomas award nomination.
Updates on Our Parks
Seating & Beautification at Virginia Highlands Park?
The pressure by residents to fund and maintain existing natural and open park spaces is hopefully making a difference. After a $3M maintenance project on VHP’s east side left park goers with less open space and not a single passive park amenity replaced, neighbors are working with DPR to ensure equitable maintenance and funding of other park needs, especially for the thousands of people who pass through this park every day. This includes benches in the shady areas and  along paths, beautification, signage, sturdy Adirondack chairs and more.

The plastic Adirondack chairs, which were generously donated by JBG Smith, are very popular in the park.

We hope to report back with positive news about general park improvements made on the east side of VHP.
What’s up with the missing fence at Virginia Highlands Park?

Most of the chain link fencing between VHP and the Parc View Apartments was removed because apparently the fence had been improperly erected on County owned parkland. The removal of the fence increases the park space and allows the County to potentially add a new gate on the southeast corner of the park at neighbor’s suggestion. A few years ago a tree-covered pedestrian path along the fence was cut-off when the spray ground fencing was added near the parking lot. The obstruction of path’s entrance now forces park goers to cross directly through the spray ground or to loop through the sport courts and restrooms to exit the park. A second gate near the spray ground would allow park goers to once again use the trail under the shade trees.
Community Park Needs

A Change.org petition of over 450 signatures asks that community park uses be added on the west side of Virginia Highlands Park in place of the softball fields. This petition was recently presented to the County Board but there has been no response. The fields are underutilized, as many softball fields are throughout the County. The Gunston softball diamond field,~1 mile away, is converting to synthetic turf this year, increasing playable hours enough to absorb nearly all the softball hours used at both VHP softball fields. With the loss of a significant amount of unprogrammed open space over the past few years and DPR converting community space to heavily reserved soccer programs, the residents of Aurora Highlands, adjacent neighborhoods and the public deserve to have space for the many uses which unprogrammed space can provide as well as the community needs such as gathering spaces, dog parks, and more. It’s time that the County Board definitively ensure that there is balance in our parks for everyone’s use. You can write to the County Board requesting that they take action.
Plan Our Public Spaces (POPS)
Good news – Bad news
FoAHP supporters and Arlington residents have looked into the field and facility recommendations for Plan Our Public Spaces (POPS) to update the Public Spaces Master Plan which guides decisions for the next few decades.

Good News
A review of multiple internal Dept. of Parks & Rec (DPR) documents has shown that Arlington has an abundance of available evening and weekend “prime” hours for potentially decades to come, especially when it comes to diamond fields. This appears to hold true if DPR improves its policies regarding maintenance and scheduling such as ensuring that sports groups utilize all available weekdays and weekends, not just a few preferable days during the middle of the week and that reduced operating hours are not hindering fields from reaching their capacities.

Just some of DPR’s analyses appear to show that;

  • Comparing field capacity levels, far fewer fields in 2017 reached their capacity than they did in 2013 despite our population increasing and the supposed increase in registrations.
  • Adult Softball Field projections showed an abundance of available prime hours even beyond 2045. This analysis excluded the recent approval of Gunston’s diamond field conversion to synthetic turf adding ~1000 more capacity hours.
  • Nearly 2/3 of all of Arlington’s fields are only used at 50% of their capacity or less. In 2017, VA Highlands diamond fields #3 and #4 had 38% and 33%, respectively, of their prime hours actually used during their seasonal weekdays and weekends.
Bad News
This information and much more has never been made part of public process and yet it appears to directly challenge the draft POPS field recommendations in all iterations of field usage, capacity and projection analyses. Furthermore, requests to DPR to make their internal analyses part of the public process have been rejected, even though some of these analyses were conducted specifically for the POPS process.

The expressed priorities by Arlington residents for trails and natural and open space areas, combined with community needs in areas like Aurora Highlands with ~ 5,000 new residential units, must take actionable priority in our public spaces.

Only full and transparent data will help all of us to make better decisions using our limited land and finances to accommodate the greatest needs for residents in our public spaces. This is something that we hope DPR would want to champion as well.

Hopefully DPR changes their mind and makes their analyses part of the public process and soon!

Learn more about some of this unpublished data and the FoAHP review of the POPS process.
How Our Parks Really Compare
How Our parks are Really Being Used
How Our Parks Are Being Managed