How Our Parks Are Really Being Managed

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Friends of Aurora Highlands Parks

April 2018

Highlights of this newsletter:
How Arlington’s Parks Are Really Being Managed: A look at the Department of Parks & Recreation’s Practices and Policies for our parks.

Arlington has lots of recreational fields. In fact, our region is fortunate to have many recreational facilities, and Arlington is one of the leaders in the region and in the country for spending on its park facilities. (Trust for Public Land page 22).

Yet we continue to hear claims that Arlington has inadequate and insufficient field facilities. The current draft Plan Our Public Spaces (POPS) plan, designed to update the 2005 Public Spaces Master Plan (PSMP), focuses heavily on adding, intensifying, and spending even more on field facilities despite overwhelming resident feedback placing much higher priorities on other needs and park uses like trails and natural and open parkland.

In this third newsletter installment of a review of the POPS process, we show that in many cases, the apparent lack of adequate facilities as expressed by some groups could result from policies and practices that unnecessarily reduce field supply and exacerbate demand.

All available evidence, mostly derived from public documents and a FOIA request, show that residents, both sports groups and the general public, could obtain more of their park needs and uses by potentially considering other solutions and understanding the real needs and capacity of our parks – but none of this is mentioned in the current PSMP draft update.

If you have any questions about these findings, please email us atinfo@friendsofahparks.org 
FoAHP Asks (More) Questions Not Answered in POPS
FoAHP’s last newsletter entitled, How Our Parks Are Really Used, revealed that 2016 -2045 field capacity (supply and demand) estimates and projected facility needs were conducted for the POPS process based on sports, participation, population, etc. However, this important report and others were never made part of public record documenting the POPS process.

In that same newsletter, FoAHP identified a pattern of errors that consistently overestimated demand and narrowed supply. FoAHP went as far as demonstrating actual capacity for diamond fields as conservatively as possible using DPR’s own estimates and excluding the percentage of grass fields that would likely be out of commission based on DPR’s consultant reports. Even with inflated demand, narrowed supply and out of commission fields, the estimates showed that Arlington’s fields should be relatively sufficient, and in some cases of diamond fields, may actually be in excess of likely demand for the next few decades.

So FoAHP asks:

  1. Why does available reservation information show that fewer actual teams are playing, yet there are more hours being reserved per team than what DPR estimated is needed for practices and games?
  2. How is it that sports groups are having issues with reserving fields?
Can Arlington Do Better with What We Already Have?
The short answer is yes. DPR hired GreenPlay consultants who worked with sports groups to analyze department practices and policy. Their feedback combined with the raw data from DPR’s internal reports (shown below) and reservations consistently align to show that there are many issues which appear to be artificially inflating demand and decreasing usable supply.
Demand:
Actual demand cannot be connected to reservation information. Actual field usage reports compiled by DPR show that numerous fields (up to 1/3) were reserved but in fact were not being used. The unused fields were highlighted in yellow. If reservation information is significantly different from the actual usage of fields, then two issues occur; first, fields are being unnecessarily removed from availability causing teams difficulty reserving time, and second, the usage and total number of hours appear to be much greater than they actually are which creates the appearance that fields are at or above capacity.

Not managing peak demand. Another reason sports groups are likely having issues reserving fields is revealed by reviewing 2017 softball field reservations. That review showed that there were peak days for playing, while other days during the season are lightly or rarely used. If teams are requesting field times primarily during peak days, which are either being fully used or appear to be fully used because of inaccurate reservation data, this may further perpetuate the unsubstantiated assertion that there needs to be more fields based primarily on these peak days.

The following shows an example week in Spring 2017 for time slots among the seven adult diamond fields, with reserved times shown in dark blue. While all fields are reserved Tuesday evening, many other days and times are very underutilized during the prime time hours (Red is open prime-time and Pink is open non prime-time).  The full 2017 calendar of reservations and open prime time hours of adult diamond fields is located here.

Reservations can be intentionally inflated and not related to actual number of hours used or what should be needed. This miscalculates the real number of hours being used compared to capacity limits. “Ideally, leagues were given a ‘cushion’ to accommodate their teams and weather” (Presentation page 6)

Reservation management problems. Among other things, GreenPlay consultants showed that teams were unable to return any unused field times back to DPR. Essentially, the unwanted and unneeded reservations continued as “reserved fields.”
Supply

Artificially Limiting Supply. DPR’s estimates are based upon an overly narrow concept of available playable fields and hours.

DPR’s field estimates show the following;

  • “Abingdon, Claremont are not included because they are considered unusable”
  • “Community Fields were not included in this analysis though programmed now.  Ideally these fields are not programmed”
  • “Does not include 5 Rect. Community Fields, bubble, Clarendon, & Abingdon”
  • “Fall Season adjusted to 10 weeks because not all sports playing before labor day”
  • And more…
Maintenance and Weather: GreenPlay mentions that field conditions vary and that 8 fields were undergoing maintenance (page 8) at the time of their report. DPR indicated to the consultants that 23% of Spring and 12% of Fall days are “days lost in some capacity to closed natural grass fields” because of weather (DPR).  For the FoAHP analysis of DPR’s POPS estimates, an additional 23% more hours were added on top of the actual needed hours per team. This very total was still lower than DPR’s estimates, which showed an excess of estimated supply.

More alternatives to increasing fields or intensifying them: GreenPlay consultants provided even more recommendations (pages 23-28) and alternatives to reduce demand and increase supply as needed, including residency requirements, prioritization, adjusting hours of play, etc…
Conclusion
While some fields may appear as if they are at or over capacity in both the reservation records and from sports groups’ stories, evidence derived from DPR’s own reports, their consultants’ reports and DPR’s facility estimates suggest that there is very likely an artificial inflation of demand that could be easily corrected throughout our facilities. Such a correction would provide opportunities for sports groups to access usable fields, alternative solutions in lieu of increasing and intensifying fields, and allow communities to gain back much needed open and natural parkland from re-allocated and underused fields.

Hopefully, DPR is making great strides to improve its own departmental practices and policies. However, the public has been in the dark about what the capacity actually is, how it could be improved, and how it could be reallocated when it is underutilized. None of the documents stemming from a FOIA request, which FoAHP and other residents have reviewed, were incorporated into the public record of the POPS process or other public discussions, but they should have been. The County now has the opportunity, and the responsibility, to ensure that these important pieces of information are part of the public record and discourse moving forward.