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12 Illinois Parks and Recreation www.ILipra.org
Sponsors don't typically line up to put their names on the sides of their local fire protection district's number one engine. As vital as fire protection districts are, what business wants its image associated with your house burning down? Park districts are a different story. A wide variety of sponsors and partners actively seek associations with this unit of local government. Why? "A number of reasons," says Hoffman Estates Park District Commissioner Scott Triphahn. "Park districts are about quality of life issues. We reach out to almost everyone in the community. And, we're in the business of fun." Face it. Fun sells. Plainfield Park District's annual Plainfield Fest is a typical example. Local banks, medical centers, newspapers, realtors and car dealers pay thousands of dollars to sponsor the three-day community and music festival held each July. Park districts — perhaps more than any other form of local government — have been able to seize upon their considerable goodwill to attract partners or sponsors from the public, private and nonprofit sectors in ways that not only help the districts, but, ultimately, the communities they serve. Park Districts' Motives for Forming Partnerships Clearly, most partnerships with private-sector companies represent a revenue stream for park districts, forest preserves, conservation and recreation agencies. Illinois park and recreation agency executives have proven time and again that they are savvy enough to create and use finance based decision-making models to determine the profitability of any proposed partnership. But there are other factors in the mix here. Park districts — as units of local government — aren't afforded the luxury of being simple, profit-driven entities. That's why there shouldn't and can't be a one-size fits all model for park district partnering in Illinois. The state's civic culture rests on the principle that each community's challenges — including its desires for community park, recreation, health and education opportunities - are best determined at the local level. No surprise, then, that Illinois leads the nation in units of local government. As a rule, park districts have shown themselves to be among the most responsive and resourceful units of local government when it comes to forming partnerships. Oftentimes the motive for partnering is to pool resources with like-minded government or civic organizations to serve an unmet community need. But even when a park district enters into a partnership to open itself to a new revenue stream, the result is not profit, but a de facto reduction in user fees or taxes. Every dollar earned from a partnership is one less dollar that needs to come from the public. "Every dollar earned from a partnership is one less dollar that needs to come from the public." www.ilparks.org January/February 2006 13 Partnership Principles and Objectives While there is no excel spread sheet model available for determining the general success of park district partnerships in Illinois, an analysis of partnership articles appearing in Illinois Parks & Recreation magazine in the last decade does reveal a general wisdom that can be gained from collecting all the individual cases. Illinois Park districts partner with other organizations for a variety of locally determined motives, which typically include: • Providing more non-tax revenue for the park district, The common threads in all successful park district partnerships are the principles of financial responsibility, increased capacity, greater efficiency and civic responsibility.
Park district partnership agreements primarily designed as revenue generators generally mirror private-sector partnerships. Districts leverage the fact that their programs attract desirable audiences. For example, the Decatur Park District lowers user fees by selling advertising space to local businesses at strategic district locations (e.g., around its indoor running track). Across the state, local businesses join with park districts to underwrite such events as golf tournaments, kite flies and youth sports leagues. The ubiquitous park district soccer team jerseys sporting the names and logos for such businesses as Sammy's Sporting Goods are evidence of the widespread appeal and success of these kinds of partnerships. Illinois park districts, largely because of the goodwill they've created, also inspire -and encourage - philanthropy. Sixty-five park and recreation agencies in Illinois partner with foundations specifically designed to raise money for the needs of the district. And, even without their own foundations, many more park districts attract charitable contributions. Between 1979 and 2004, $3,185,000 of donations, local foundation grants and estate endowments poured into the Geneseo Park District. The district put these charitable contributions towards the construction of a new community center and four other new facilities, along with four renovation projects at existing sites. In 2002, the Friends of Indian Mounds Pool raised more than $375,000 to renovate a Quincy Park District aquatic facility. But even a small partnership gift to a park district can make a big difference. Children today enjoy the Frankfort Park District's Hang Time after school program thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Mark. When they heard that the grant money used to start the program had run out, the Marks donated $3,500 to keep Hang Time going. Clearly, people trust that park districts will use their contributions wisely.  14 Illinois Parks and Recreation www.ILipra.org Partnering for Preservation While some groups partner out of a sense of philanthropy or a desire for profit, many others partner with park districts because they sense a "mission meld" exists between them and the district. Preservation partnerships are prime examples of this kind of relationship. Examples from the past decade include: • Quincy Park District's partnership with local organizations to preserve such historic buildings as the Lorenzo Bull family home, the Quincy Arts Center and Villa Katherine, a Moorish Castle. • The East St. Louis Park District's partnership with the University of Illinois to devise a plan to reinvigorate Jones-Hall Park. • The Chicago Park District's role in forming "Nature Chicago," an effort of the district and the city's Department of Environment that improved natural areas on the Chicago River, Lake Michigan and several railroad corridors. • The Champaign Park District's partnerships with several partners and donors - including 350,000 from the Champaign News Gazette — to revive the Virginia Theater, which the district acquired in 2000 when it appeared that that landmark would otherwise be lost.
School and park districts often share common goals and concerns, especially when it comes to providing high quality sports and recreation venues. Time and again, park districts and school districts have worked through political and legal impediments in order to serve the public by ensuring that park and school programs are getting the most use out of public facilities and aren't duplicating each other's efforts. For example, the Morton Grove Park District partners with five area school districts. The park district uses one school's music room for community jazz band practices; another school uses a nearby park every day for recess; the schools' swim teams all practice at the park district's aquatic facilities, and the park district runs basketball programs in the schools. "All of our agreements [with the school districts] are agreements where we share space," said Morton Grove Director Jim Fougerousse. All the district's intergovernmental agreements are built on the foundation of saving tax dollars and eliminating duplication of services, said Fougerousse. But sometimes, there's even more at stake. When a local school referendum failed, the Morton Grove Park District stepped up to save after-school activities for 400 kids. In addition to education and recreation, park district and community beyond-school programming is also a matter of public safety That's why, back in 2000, the Schaumburg Park District partnered with two school districts, the local library district, the YMCA and the village's police department to form a program called LATER (Lend a Hand to youth Through Education and Recreation). Cook County provided a grant for the program designed to give kids an alternative to vandalism and other mischief. An analysis of the program's effectiveness showed that minor crimes in two targeted areas dropped by 30 and 40 percent after the program went into place.
www.ilparks.org January/February 2006 15
Partnering to Create Better Recreation Opportunities and Facilities for the Public No doubt, park districts are often the sole units of local government charged with the responsibility for building recreation facilities for the public. But, even in the pursuit of that mandate, park districts take advantage of local opportunities to share both the risk and the credit for creating state-of-the art facilities. When the Decatur Park District and Millikin University both realized they were in the process of planning separate recreation centers, the two organizations worked through a two-year process to plan for a larger, more versatile facility. The result is the 87,000-square foot Decatur Indoor Sports Center (or DISC), housed on the Millikin campus. The park district owns and operates center for the university and the community. University students' activity fees pay for their use of the facility, and the district and the university equally share the net income. "It just made sense that two could do it better than one," said Decatur Park District Executive Director William Clevenger. Partnering for Proper Governance and the Common Good Communities across the state often ask park districts to partner with other units of local government so that the community will ultimately win. For example, the Buffalo Grove Park District helps reduce telecommunication costs for the village and school district by housing replication centers for a shared wireless communications network.  16 Illinois Parks and Recreation www.ILipra.org
On occasion, even in Illinois, communities do decide that there is too much local government involved in providing park and recreation opportunities. That was the case in 2002, when the City of Springfield transferred the city's park and recreation department responsibilities to the Springfield Park District, including Lincoln Greens Golf Course and a number of parks and natural areas. The citizens of Oak Park faced a similar situation. A citizen-driven yearlong comprehensive park planning process cosponsored by the village and the Park District of Oak Park revealed that citizens wanted a single government entity to be responsible for parks and recreation. The park district was formed in 1912, and the village created a recreation department nine years later. Around 1980, the park district took over the village recreation department's responsibilities. But the transfer of funding and properties was never completed, causing confusion about the governance of parks and recreation in Oak Park. To understand the complexities of the situation, the citizen planning commission formed several subcommittees to gather information, to determine benchmark communities with which to compare Oak Park and to keep the community informed about the master planning process. When the plan was complete, the next logical step was to try to pass a referendum to give the district the wherewithal to provide for the community's current and future www.ilparks.org January/February 2006 17
needs in the absence of the village recreation department. The citizen involvement in the planning process gave tremendous momentum to a referendum drive. The village's Wednesday Journal endorsed the move, saying, "We wholeheartedly endorse the park district referendum because it's based on sound, citizen-driven planning." On April 5, 2005, the people of Oak Park agreed with the Journal, by overwhelmingly passing the first park district referendum since 1968. Scott Triphahn might call that another victory for the fun unit of local government and for the people it serves. Perfect Schmerfect Building all the motives, needs, wants, desires, costs and benefits of all the parties involved into "The Model of the Perfect Illinois Park District Partnership" would likely take a football team of Nobel Prize economists. And maybe that will come someday. Until then, the evidence gleaned from the last 10 years of Illinois Parks & Recreation reporting on park district partnerships strongly suggests that park districts, with their unique understanding of local priorities and their record of finding creative ways to respond to local needs, already excel at building partnerships that work. Because, ultimately, all politics is local, making broad generalizations about why this form of local government is so often successful at partnering is difficult — but only if you're looking for a strictly formulaic answer. Perhaps the model Illinois partnership is much more straightforward: In Illinois, park district partnerships aren't only about dollars and cents. They are, however, always about what makes sense. Robin Hall, CPRP is the director of the Office of Recreation and Tourism Devlopement and is a vising lecturer at the Department of Recreaction, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Illinois. He served as IPRA president in 1982, and was the executive director of the Urbana Park District for more than 32 years. 18 Illinois Parks and Recreation www.ILipro.org |
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