Creating open space no walk in the park

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[Source: Jen Lebron Kuhney, Arizona Republic]- On a recent Saturday, more than two dozen children climbed up and over a piece of playground equipment at Surprise Community Park as parents stood shoulder to shoulder watching at the edge of the playground.

Across the street, dozens of families crowded under canopies, trying to claim scraps of shade, while nearby soccer players waited patiently for a turn to play on fully scheduled fields.

“It’s crazy how many people there are here,” said Surprise resident Eric Mitchell as he surveyed the park he frequents with his children, Connor, 8, and Emily, 5. “Surprise could use more spots like this.”

Packed parks are the norm in this once fast-growing West Valley community, which has only four city parks for its 117,000 residents. Similar problems plague several Valley cities, where a shortage of recreation facilities hurts residents’ quality of life and could hurt the cities’ economies.

Economic forces are partly to blame for the shortage. As the housing boom brought thousands of new residents to Valley communities, the recession that followed brought park creation to a standstill. With tax revenue taking a hit, parks and recreation departments tabled plans to build, expand and upgrade parks, pools and other facilities while they cut hours and staff.

But other factors have played a role as well. In some northwest Valley communities, which traditionally had more older residents and few parks, development brought young families clamoring for recreation facilities to the area. Older voters have been reluctant to pay for new parks.

Dale Larsen, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Public Programs and former director of the Phoenix Parks and Recreation Department, said it’s not an issue successful cities can ignore. Parks are an integral part of what gives communities their character, he said.

“Public spaces in and of themselves are gathering places without regard to race, income, gender or ability,” he said. “They’re all-inclusive and absolutely vital.”

Need for parks

Now that the economy is improving, some cities are ramping up parks projects while others aren’t. Surprise and Mesa, for example, have hundreds of acres of parks on the drawing board, but it is unclear when funds will be available to build them.

There is no one-size-fits-all formula for how many parks or how much open space a city should have.

However, “intermediate-low-density” cities such as Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale and Chandler should set aside 8.1 percent of the total area of the city for parks and open space, according to the Trust for Public Land, a land-conservation non-profit.

The trust tracks parks and open space in 40 U.S. cities and ranks them based on park access, quality and size. Three Arizona cities are on the list: Phoenix, Tucson and Mesa, which rank 16th, 31st and 36th, respectively.

The trust gave Phoenix high marks because parks account for 13.7 percent of its area. Though the Trust for Public Land did not analyze Peoria, it has one of the highest ratios with 26.4 percent of its area devoted to parks and open space. The Peoria and Phoenix numbers, however, include massive regional parks, including Lake Pleasant and mountain preserves.

While not as important as how accessible parks are to people, park size is one factor that can show a city’s commitment to parks, said Peter Harnik, the director of the trust’s Center for City Park Excellence.

Generation gap

City officials throughout the Valley recognize the importance of parks and open spaces, but some cities, particularly in the West Valley, have struggled to meet that need.

Some cities, such as Surprise, had an older population that valued golf courses in their age-restricted communities over public parks and recreation centers. Older voters didn’t see a need for parks when their homeowners-association fees paid for pools, tennis courts and exercise facilities.

That changed in the housing boom of the 2000s, when developers started building homes on inexpensive land in the northwest Valley. Younger families moved into the new neighborhoods, which were less expensive than homes in other Phoenix-area cities.

But Surprise wasn’t prepared for its new, younger residents.

Surprise Community Park was built in 2003 and was the first large park of its kind in the city. Three other parks followed, but eight other large parks were planned but never built.

Now, the city needs 1,235 acres of park space if it wants to catch up with its 2008 parks plan.

The housing bust crippled tax revenue from developers and residents, which left Surprise and other Valley cities without money to catch up with demand for parks. Voters also have defeated bond proposals that could have paid for the upgrades.

Voters roundly rejected a Surprise bond proposal in 2009 that would have gone primarily toward transportation projects but included $6.7 million for parks and recreation improvements.

“When you don’t have funding, you can’t build even when the demand is there,” said Mark Coronado, Surprise’s community and parks director.

Coming up with money has been an issue for other northwest Valley cities as well.

Youngtown, which had age-restricted communities but now has a growing number of younger residents, has been hobbled by financial woes. It had such bad financial problems it considered disbanding as a town and being annexed by a neighboring city last year.

El Mirage had not invested heavily in parks because local leaders traditionally had declined to seek bond funding. But the city, now home to many new residents with young children, devoted $5.5 million of sales-tax revenue and voter-approved bond money for a recreation center with a swimming pool in last year’s budget.

Catching up

Other Valley cities are also taking steps to remedy their backlog of parks and recreation projects that went untouched during the downturn.

Mesa created a $793 million plan in 2002 to have an expansive park system with open spaces, swimming pools, playgrounds and fields by 2025, but the recession dried up revenue that would have paid for land purchases and maintenance of the planned parks.

Now, the city is beginning to upgrade existing parks after voters approved a $70 million bond in November.

But before building new parks, Mesa has to maintain current facilities, said Mark Heirshberg, director of the city’s parks and recreation department.

“We have to put in funding to take care of existing park systems and make repairs that we haven’t been able to make because of the recession,” he said.

Not all Valley cities put parks on hold during the downturn.

Peoria had bond money set aside to keep building parks, said Brenda Rehnke, the city’s recreation manager.

“It was good financial management,” Rehnke said. “Our mayor and council made it a priority.”

Four new parks were opened in Peoria in 2011 and 2012, with more facilities scheduled to get face-lifts in 2013.

Other cities, such as Chandler and Scottsdale, also had long-term park plans that allowed them to weather the recession, officials from those cities say. Additionally, both were not as hard-hit economically as others in the region.

An economic boost

Resuming park construction should be a priority, experts say, because it affects quality of life for residents and it can impact future economic development.

Harnik, of the Trust for Public Land, said cities are starting to see the value of parks and recreation centers beyond places for children to play. Recreation centers and other youth facilities can also be a boon for a city’s coffers.

“I think we’re in a golden age of urban parks,” Harnik said. “There are places that are going gangbusters on their park-building.”

One major recreation facility that has demonstrated its ability to bring in tourism is the Reach 11 Sports Complex in Phoenix.

The 5-year-old facility has 18 lighted soccer fields and is one of the largest soccer complexes in the western United States.

Tourists and groups attending tournaments at the complex generated $120 million in sales and $2.9 million in tax revenue in 2010, according to a Phoenix 2010 staff report.

Aside from being a draw for tourists, park spaces can help families determine where they want to settle down.

Larsen, the ASU professor, said asking if parks draw in residents to a new city or if an increase in residents requires cities to build more parks is like trying to determine if the chicken or the egg came first.

However, he added that well-maintained parks can improve property values.

“We’re at a point where officials are making parks more of a priority,” he said. “Once they realize parks are safe, structured areas for people to gather, they understand it’s a huge asset for a community.”

 

 

Arizona volunteers aid annual count of endangered ferret

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[Source: Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic] – SELIGMAN — At 2 in the morning, you start seeing things in the path of the spotlight.Ed the Fed, a recaptured black-footed ferret, was identified from the chip placed in him during last years spotlighting event. Ferrets captured for the first time are anesthetized, examined, vaccinated and implanted with a chip. Recaptured ferrets are vaccinated.

A shrub that appears to move. A pair of red eyes that quicken the pulse until you realize they belong to a common rabbit. Anything, it seems, but the green glow from the eyes of one of the world’s rarest mammals.

Then, “Ferret!” someone in the truck shouts. Brakes lock and tires slide on the dirt road.

You can’t make out its shape in the distance, but the telltale green reflection from a black-footed ferret’s eyes give it away. And, in this case, rather than freezing or running, the weasel bobs playfully as it inspects the intruders.

Every spring, the Arizona Game and Fish Department seeks the nocturnal predators with an army of spotlighting volunteers who count and vaccinate the endangered black-footed ferret, the only American species, which was once on the brink of extinction.

The collapse of prairie-dog towns from poison and the plow nearly wiped out ferrets in the past century. But, 17 years ago, they were transplanted from captivity into prairie-dog towns throughout the West because they dine almost exclusively on the destructive rodents. Now, under protections for both predator and prey, ferrets are thriving here like nowhere else.

Searchers are never skunked in scrubby Aubrey Valley, about 30 miles northwest of Seligman. March 29, the second of six outings planned for this year, was no exception.

“We hit new records every year, so it’s quite exciting,” wildlife technician and veteran spotlighter Heather Heimann told volunteers before the hunt. Then, she told them that any fingers that they’d like to keep should be kept away from trapped ferrets and to expect the animals to deploy some smelly defenses.

“I call it endangered-species pee,” Heimann said. “A bonus.”

Arizona’s ferret-recovery zone, in the northwestern part of the state, has proved a pleasant surprise to federal wildlife managers. It is one of just a few colonies where the ferrets are self-sustaining.

The search leads to captures so that the animals can be counted and vaccinated against canine distemper. If one of these silky, black-masked ferrets is trapped for the first time, an electronic ID chip is inserted in the nape of its neck. The animal is gassed with a sedative, first while inside a capture tube and then through a mask.

Volunteers come from all over Arizona and beyond, and there’s always someone who went to great pains to be there. This time it was Neil Edwards of Swansea, Wales. He and his wife re-arranged their Grand Canyon vacation to co-incide with the spring trapping.

“I’m a keen bird-watcher in the U.K.,” he said, “but also animals. Whenever I go on holiday, I study up on animals in the area.”

At 2 a.m. last Saturday, he got a special thrill when he walked toward a 2-foot-long ferret and watched it disappear down a burrow. About 60 people helped search dirt roads for the animals that night, and he was in a group of seven.

They approached and placed a wire-cage trap with spring-loaded door into the hole. They covered it with a burlap sack to block light, presenting the ferret with the illusion that the exit was now a few feet higher.

Then, they placed Big Gulp cups over other potentially connected holes, leaving the ferret only one way out. They marked the spot on a global-positioning system and left, planning to return within an hour to ensure that their quarry wouldn’t spend too much time exposed to the cold.

“I just think it’s brilliant,” Edwards said of Arizona’s recovery efforts. “What a success story.”

Volunteers in each of the past couple of years have found more than 100 ferrets in Aubrey Valley. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates there are about 500 ferrets in 20 reintroduction sites from northern Mexico to the Dakotas.

In three nights, volunteers captured 28 ferrets. That would be low by recent standards if it held as the yearly count, but Game and Fish expects a second round of trapping this month will greatly increase the total.

“Last year, we were probably the most successful site in the country,” said Jennifer Cordova, Arizona Game and Fish’s ferret-program supervisor. “Others, unfortunately, plagued out.”

She referred to the same black-death plague that terrorized Europe in the 14th century. Antibiotics and other defenses minimize the threat to people, though rare deaths still occur.

But the insect-borne disease can wipe out ferrets as well as the prairie dogs they eat. The illness is relatively new to North America, having first arrived in California around 1900. It’s unclear why it hasn’t struck the Aubrey Valley, but it has devastated other recovery areas.

It’s possible to slow plague by dusting animal burrows with flea killer, but that’s expensive and time-consuming. Plague vaccines can’t be administered without a veterinarian present, which is also expensive. The state’s program, funded through the federal government and a match with Lottery proceeds in the Heritage Fund, is $200,000.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, massive swaths of ferret habitats in the western Great Plains were plowed under, and ranchers who worried about competition for grass poisoned many of the prairie dogs that remained.

Ferrets were absent from Arizona for 65 years before being reintroduced in 1996. They were thought to be extinct until a colony was discovered in Meeteetse, Wyo., in 1981.

Disease killed all but 18 animals in the mid-1980s, and the government trapped those for captive breeding. Several zoos, including the Phoenix Zoo, and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service center in northern Colorado help maintain a captive population of 300, some of which were conditioned for release.

The number of captures in Aubrey Valley has steadily increased in recent years, from 60 in 2009 to 96 in 2010, 116 in 2011 and 123 last year.

“I was on the project in ’99,” Cordova said, “and we’d go out spotlighting and maybe find one ferret.”

The government’s goal is to have 3,000 adult ferrets in 12 states, with at least 10 populations exceeding 100, said Pete Gober, ferret-recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Sixteen-year-old Texan Molly Campbell traveled from Fort Worth for the roundup. With her headlamp shining onto a caged ferret that she was preparing to return to the wild, she said she came to make a difference and maybe preview a career.

Her uncle Ed Newcomer, a Fish and Wildlife Service special agent from Los Angeles, accompanied her. They ended up catching the same ferret two nights in a row — something one researcher is counting on during these events, to help chart ferret movements.

Volunteers who trap a ferret that has never been tagged and cataloged get to pick the name that biologists will call it each time it’s caught. Campbell and Newcomer named theirs Ed the Fed.

Effort To Restore Heritage Fund Dead for the 2013 Session

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[Source: Kyle Mittan, Tucson Weekly] – It looks as if the chance to restore Heritage Fund dollars to state parks and transit services is dead for the year.

But Tucson Rep. Ethan Orr said he would continue to work to restoring the Heritage Fund, despite the House Appropriations Committee’s recent decision to not hear House Bill 2594. Orr, as the bill’s primary sponsor, had wanted to restore the Heritage Fund dollars that were eliminated in 2010 as part of a budget-balancing package. His bill would have directed $10 million in lottery funds to the Heritage Fund, as well as $9 million in lottery funds to local transportation.

Although the bill failed to get past the Appropriations Committee, Orr said he planned to bring the bill back next year. Orr added that he has had a close working relationship with Arizona State Parks Executive Director Bryan Martyn, who also has an “excellent 20-year vision” for the maintenance and preservation of Arizona’s state parks.

Orr said that the state parks are important on a number of levels, specifically in terms of state economics and preserving the history of Arizona. “Strictly from an economical standpoint, they’re key drivers for our rural communities,” he said. “And they’re part of our heritage; they’re part of celebrating what’s beautiful in Arizona.”

My Turn: Arizona State Parks feels winds of positive change

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[Source: Bryan Martyn, Camp Verde Bugle] – As many of you know, our 28 Arizona State Parks are all open and still attracting more than 2.2 million visitors to Arizona. Even with high gas prices slowing campers in the rural western states, especially those with RV’s, State Parks’ visitation is holding steady.

Because Arizona State Parks is treated like a business, we have had to reduce a few hours, make some parks seasonal, and have increased our reliance on communities and Friend’s Groups. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen an increase in our revenues and a decrease in our operational costs. The winds of positive change are definitely blowing our way.

The support we see every day from the public is stronger than it has ever been. I believe the aggressive efforts by the residents and visitors to protect the system of Arizona’s State Parks reflects the sentiments of the majority of Arizona’s residents.

Today, I’m inviting every Arizonan to get out and enjoy their Parks. The weather is perfect throughout the state. Arizona State Parks has a new program called “Family Camping.” This program shows how easy and affordable camping can be. We give you a tent and fishing poles to use, and we even show you how to set up the tent and set your hook. We are “Camping Central” for campers looking for information. Call us during the week or check out our website 24 hours a day for ideas, camping tips and maps.

One of Arizona State Park’s best qualities is our flush toilets, hot showers and easy access. Every one of our Parks is handicap accessible and a compact car won’t have any trouble…as our roads are paved. Campers will be surprised to find upgraded areas like white sand on the Colorado River park beaches, huge shade trees and new campground loops.

The skills of our Rangers to manage volunteers and projects that enhance the Parks are one of our greatest assets. Our Rangers are experts at their Park and many of them are law enforcement officers. Our Parks are safe, convenient, affordable and provide untold opportunities to develop memories that last a lifetime.

See you at the Parks! Bryan Martyn is the Executive Director of Arizona State Parks.