Among the 100 biggest U.S. cities, three-quarters have more funding per capita for park systems than Philadelphia.
The drop was partly due to a decrease in funding after the pandemic hit and partly because the score didn’t include multi-year funding for Rebuild, the city’s program to improve parks, said Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell. The lump sum was included in the calculation for last year’s report, but it is being spent over multiple years, she said.
“We really struggle with just trying to fund all the needs of our city, and unfortunately we know, because of the report that TPL does every year, that Philadelphia is one of the more underfunded Parks and Recreation systems in the country,” Ott Lovell said in an interview Friday. Washington, D.C., which ranks first, spends $284 per person in an average year, according to ParkScore. The national average is $98 per resident.Camden County plans to spend $100 million to overhaul its park system and add a 34-mile trailIn March 2020, the Parks and Recreation Department budget was set to get “probably the largest increase we had received in years,” Ott Lovell said. But then the pandemic hit, and, with cuts in many areas. For parks, that meant a 20% cut, the commissioner said.
“Around budget time, people think about it as … it’s just a nicety and not a necessity, but the truth is that we’ve demonstrated over the last two years that Parks and Recreation is an essential service,” she said.
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