The Fairfax County Park Authority is seeking citizen comment as it works to craft a 10-year action plan for land acquisition and parkland development.
For the next 2 1/2 months, the Park Authority will be registering views from citizens, supervisors, planning commissioners, conservationists and others as part of its 11-month needs-assessment project. After collecting information, the Park Authority will analyze it and recommend the first 10-year action plan for Fairfax County parks since 1993. A survey asking Fairfax County residents about their views on the park system's future will be mailed randomly to households in mid-June.
The needs assessment will seek to determine "the best direction that we should take over the next couple of years in order to achieve what the needs are from the public 10 years from now," said Frank Vajda, Park board member from Mason District.
The Park Authority has hired three consulting firms to help with the needs-assessment project. Ron Vine of Leisure Vision, Leon Younger of Leon Younger, and Pros and Woolpert LLP have experience in drafting similar needs assessments for other jurisdictions around the country.
"The big problem is figuring out what those needs are," said Kirk Holley, the manager of the Planning and Land Management Branch of the Fairfax County Park Authority. The consultants "are helping us to do that," he added.
At a May 20 public hearing on the needs assessment, Vine outlined the four phases of the project. After the information-gathering phase, he said, the Park Authority and consultants will spend 10 weeks examining the responses, six to eight weeks coming up with specific recommendations, and five to six weeks fine-tuning the 10-year plan.
CITIZENS AT THE MEETING expressed concern that lower-income neighborhoods in the county are underserved by parks.
"You can go to a park in a very nice part of the county and have very nice amenities," said David Hoff of Annandale. "We don't even have soccer goals at Jeb Stuart."
There is a great need for soccer facilities in lower-income, largely immigrant neighborhoods, and local parks should reflect that need, added Hoff.
"Demographics are really going to govern park use, and they're always in flux," said Kathy James, who serves as tree commissioner for Mason District.
Speakers also urged the consultants and the Park Authority to make sure they hear from immigrant populations who may not respond to the June survey. Holley said the Park Authority and consultants will use networks set up by social-service organizations to target hard-to-reach groups.
Several speakers stressed the need for land acquisition before the county is built out. James suggested that a 10-year plan might be too long and that developers might eat up all available land in the meantime. "We have a very small window for land acquisition for parks," she said. "We know the population is going to get denser."
The county has been known to buy parkland without immediately developing park facilities on it in order to secure a parcel from development, said Holley. He refused to comment on the extent of such "land banks," calling parkland acquisition "a confidential matter." But as an example he cited the Hunter-Hacor tract in Centreville, which was purchased with the help of the Board of Supervisors and has so far not been developed.
"We would seek opportunities that are reasonable, that meet our criteria and that might not be available in future years," he said.
Also mentioned at the meeting was the need for more dog parks, picnic areas, outdoor amphitheaters, public golf courses, and camping and boating facilities.
SOME OF THE IMPROVEMENTS to come out of the process could be funded by bond money, according to Vajda. The Board of Supervisors has approved a $20 million park bond on the ballot in November, and the Park Authority hopes to place $100 million on the ballot in 2004.
"Part of the thinking [behind this year's bond referendum] was that now is the time to get the land before it's developed. And the price is right, although in some cases it's escalating quickly," said Vajda.
This year's bond money will be used for both park development and land acquisition. The amount used for each was left intentionally unspecified by the Board to give the Park Authority some flexibility, said Holley.
Neither Vajda nor Holley harbored any fears that the referendum would be unsuccessful. "The public has supported us in the past," said Holley. "We've never had one fail."
"We try to give them their money's worth," said Vajda.