Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Bravo on Booth decision!

The Birmingham City Commission did the right thing Monday night in approving major improvements to Booth Park. The community group that led the effort gave the commission the right plan for the right park at the right time.

In purchasing the park, the commission gave an important nod to local professionals, who under the previous commission were more often shunned as evil developers than embraced as valuable community resources.

As the commission moves forward and considers such projects as Shain Park, Barnum Center, Kenning Park and others, its action Monday night will pay off handsomely. The commission got a great deal on the Booth Park concept design -- more than $25,000 in professional fees were donated to the city. By encouraging and rewarding grassroots talent, it is likely to get the same kind of input on future projects.

The commission also showed that it's willing to listen to the community. The Booth plan was broadly supported, and virtually no opposition was expressed.

In funding an improvement, the commission also showed that it's willing to spend some of the proceeds of the bond issue on something other than acquisitions. This wasn't the first improvement funded, of course (Quarton Lake Park got about $1 million in improvements out of the bond), but when compared with the $8 million spent on Barnum, and the $2.5 million they're talking about spending to acquire land from Roeper School, the numbers devoted to improvements seem minimal at this point. That's too bad for those of us who voted for the bond primarily because we favored improvements, not acquisitions. But the trend line is moving in the right direction. We think we ought to make the most of what we already own -- and we own a substantial amount of parkland already -- before we spend millions on new land.

Perhaps most important, the commission put our money where its mouth is. Coincidentally, also on Monday night's agenda was a list of goals the commissioners developed at a special session back in December. Uncannily, those goals included:

* Exercise stewardship
* Encourage citizen involvement
* Invest in infrastructure
* Enhance the overall aesthetic environment of the city
* Develop public facilities, including parks and recreation facilities, to meet community needs

The commission went a long way toward meeting these goals with its action Monday night.