Budget limiting plans for area parks

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jun 13, 2005 | by ED SEALOVER THE GAZETTE

Colorado Springs won't make any big strides toward meeting its backlogged parks and recreation needs next year, it appears.

Almost half the construction and renovation projects recommended by staffers are unlikely to get done, including work on the aging City Auditorium, officials said.

That news, delivered by staff members to the parks board last week, follows tough years in which the department has lost $1.1 million and 25 full-time workers to budget cuts. A backlog of 20 neighborhood and community parks and athletic fields that the city plans to build has piled up in recent years.

The department's preliminary capital im- provement budget for 2006 is $9.1 million, far lower than the requested $16.4 million. It includes seven new trails, three new neighborhood parks and two handball courts at Memorial Park.

The money comes from grants, the state lottery, the city general fund and the city Trails, Open Space and Parks tax.

Missing from the plan are $1.7 million in suggested repairs to the 82-year-old auditorium, such as the addition of air conditioning and modernization of plumbing. Nor is there funding for a number of Briargate and Stetson Hills parks, including the longcussed John Venezia Community Park and its infusion of athletic fields.

"The development in the northeast especially has far exceeded your ability to keep up with parks," resident Cathy Post told the board at a Thursday public hearing.

Chris Lieber, park design and development manager, acknowledged requests for 2006 exceed what the city can afford. Still, he painted a picture of an active year ahead.

New parks are scheduled for the Springs Ranch, University Park and Stetson Ridge South neighborhoods. The south side of Memorial Park by Prospect Lake will get $100,000 worth of improvements. Van Diest Park on Chelton Road will be renovated.

Several citizen groups feel the budget isn't meeting their needs, though.

Officials declined to recommend money for fixing the downtown auditorium because they're waiting for council direction on the building's future, parks and recreation director Paul Butcher said.

But John Hazlehurst, founder of Friends of the City Auditorium, sees the decision as another failure of the city to live up to its commitment to improve the structure. He hopes to rally members of the organization to lobby the council before it approves its budget in December.

"I'm surprised at how they blatantly chose to ignore what the people want," Hazlehurst said. "This kind of thing really demonstrates the swirled nature of the budgeting process in Colorado Springs."

Post and other northeast residents want the city to move on Venezia Park before the land slated for it, at Union Boulevard and Briargate Parkway, is sold commercially. Though 110 acres are mapped out for a park in the Briargate Master Plan, the city does not own the property and would have to acquire it, Lieber said.

St. Mary's High School leaders also asked the city to contribute $250,000 to the Grace Center for Athletics and Community Service, on which they broke ground last week. The 25-acre complex includes a track, grass fields and an artificial turf field, and the city could schedule games there at no cost when the school is not using it.

The city won't make any purchases like Red Rock Canyon in 2006.

The Trails, Open Space and Parks tax that funds openspace acquisitions is set to expire in 2009. Almost all of the money is allocated to paying off land purchases made in past years.

The only 2006 open-space funding -- about $875,000 -- will go toward developing trails at the canyon, acquired in 2003, Lieber said.