NACPRO News

June 6, 2023

NRPA Recognizes Excellence in Parks and Recreation with the Innovation and Spotlight Awards

Congratulations to NACPRO member agency, Snohomish County Parks and Recreation!  

The National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) is excited to announce the recipients of this year’s NRPA Innovation Awards, Spotlight Awards and Scholarships and Fellowships. The awards will be presented during the 2023 NRPA Annual Conference in October when NRPA will announce the winner of its Best in Innovation Award, which recognizes the best of the best in park and recreation innovation.  

Innovation in Conservation Award

Meadowdale Beach Park & Estuary Restoration Project, Snohomish County Parks & Recreation, Snohomish, Washington

Read more:
https://www.nrpa.org/about-national-recreation-and-park-association/press-room/nrpa-recognizes-excellence-in-parks-and-recreation-with-the-innovation-and-spotlight-awards3/

Chesterfield Crowned Prismatic Raptor Perches in Local Parks
Courtesy of NRPA

By Sharon K. Entsminger, CPRP

In celebration of Park and Recreation Month 2022, Chesterfield County (Virginia) Parks and Recreation designed a community engagement strategy using Facebook posts about a large bird circulating throughout its parks. The objective was to drive park and trail visitation while increasing interest in the department’s facilities and services.

The idea was inspired by a campaign orchestrated by the Westminster (Colorado) Parks, Recreation and Libraries Department several years ago. Identified as the Chesterfield Crowned Prismatic Raptor, or CCPR, the bird moved to a different park each week. New information about the bird — name, size, color and habits — generated by Chesterfield County Parks and Recreation emerged on social media with the help of community members who agreed to promote the campaign with their own posts, sharing information and their own “sightings.” 

Read more:
https://www.nrpa.org/parks-recreation-magazine/2023/june/chesterfield-crowned-prismatic-raptor-perches-in-local-parks/

Identifying Policies That Advance Racial & Economic Justice in Rural Places 
Courtesy of the PBIC Messenger

By Kimberly Libman

ChangeLab Solutions has a long track record of working with rural communities. Our most recent project that focuses on rural communities, Toward Better Rural Futures, aims to foster greater collaboration and alignment across local, regional, and state levels of government, equipping leaders with the tools and knowledge to fundamentally shift power, opportunity, and resources in order to create healthy rural places where everyone can thrive. At the outset of this project, we conducted a comprehensive policy scan designed to identify state and local policies that can advance racial equity and equitable economic development in rural communities of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) that are experiencing persistent poverty. 

Read more:
https://www.changelabsolutions.org/blog/identifying-policies-advance-racial-economic-justice-rural-places

Who Benefits Most from Land Conservation Efforts?
Courtesy of Planetizen

A growing number of leaders at all levels of government in the U.S. and abroad have made commitments to achieve “30×30,” the goal of conserving 30 percent of lands and coastal waters by the year 2030 to fight climate change, advance conservation, and protect biodiversity. While there has been much emphasis on determining which lands should be conserved, there has been little discussion or analysis about who benefits most from the protection of additional natural lands. Land conservation efforts across America sustain ecological and other benefits while generating wealth in the housing market through the capitalization of amenities. In this paper, researchers Corey Lang, Jarron VanCeylon, and Amy W. Ando estimate the benefits of conservation that are capitalized into proximate home values and quantifies how those benefits are distributed across demographic groups.

Using detailed property and household-level data from Massachusetts, this study estimates that new land conservation led to $62 million in new housing wealth equity.  However, homes owned by low-income or Black or Hispanic households are less likely to be located near protected natural areas, and therefore, these populations are less likely to benefit financially.

Read more:
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/06/123744-who-benefits-most-land-conservation-efforts

Destination Management Handbook: A Guide to the Planning and Implementation
Courtesy of The World Bank

The Destination Management Handbook has been prepared by the World Bank Group to highlight the challenges and opportunities that destination managers face at all stages of tourism development. It has been written primarily to guide destinations that do not have broad tourism management experience. It is intended to be practical; covering the theory of destination management, but above all empowering practitioners to select tools and implement approaches that suit their circumstances. The handbook has been written to cover different levels of maturity, but particularly to guide smaller, emerging destinations with resource constraints. As tourism recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important for destinations to be competitive, providing the best possible experiences to the tourist and the best possible returns for the destination itself. Well managed tourism is increasingly demanded by destination stakeholders, community interests and visitors alike.
 
For more information:  
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099451003012313859/idu07402ad17053a5043c909eb80cd040870838c

Address Safety on State-Owned Roads Now
Courtesy of the PBIC Messenger

The Vision Zero Network notes that over the last five years, more than half of fatal crashes in urban areas occurred on roads managed by states, and outlines strategies to name, claim, count, coordinate, slow, transform, and fund safety on these state-owned roads. Includes developing a High Injury Network, which helps focus limited resources at locations where high numbers of people are killed and severely injured.

Read more:
https://visionzeronetwork.org/hin-for-the-win/

Effectiveness of RRFBs in Small and Rural Communities 
Courtesy of the PBIC Messenger

Evaluates the effectiveness of rectangular rapid flashing beacons (RRFBs) in rural and small communities. Notes pedestrians in rural communities may face a heightened risk in transition zones from higher-speed rural highways where drivers’ perceptions and awareness may lag behind their changing surroundings, reduced speed limits, and pedestrian presence.

Read more:
https://vtrans.vermont.gov/sites/aot/files/Research/Final_RRFB_Evaluation_March21_2023_0.pdf

Finding balance between ATV use and nature conservation
Courtesy of Parks and Recreation Business

By Jefferey Spivey

The prevalence of ATVs and other off-highway vehicles (OHVs) creates some tension between the permitting of fun outdoor activity and preserving nature. Various park systems across the country are managing these competing priorities in different ways.

Read more:
https://www.parksandrecbusiness.com/articles/respect-over-recklessness

TPL 2023 ParkScore Report: Parks and Healthcare – A New and Growing Playbook
Courtesy of Parks and Recreation Business

Trust for Public Land announced today that Washington, DC, was rated the nation’s best big-city park system by the 2023 ParkScore index. Saint Paul, Minnesota, placed second, Minneapolis climbed to third, and Irvine, California, surged to fourth. Irvine climbed four places over 2022’s eighth-place finish and reached the top five for the first time in ParkScore index history. The ParkScore index evaluates park systems in the 100 largest U.S. cities. 

Accompanying the annual ratings list, Trust for Public Land published new research reporting that cities with high ParkScore rankings are healthier places to live. 

Read more:
https://www.parksandrecbusiness.com/articles/tpl-2023-parkscore-report-parks-and-healthcare-a-new-and-growing-playbook

7% of the United States Is a ‘Play Desert’
Courtesy of Route 50

By Leigh Beeson

These play deserts are areas where parks and other spots to run around and play are nonexistent, hard to access, or in less safe locations that make parents second-guess taking their children to play there.

Many of the counties lacking access to play areas were clustered in the Southeast and Southwest. Additionally, pockets of play deserts were most common in rural and suburban areas throughout the country. But in the South, even urban areas lacked adequate play space.

Read more:
https://www.route-fifty.com/health-human-services/2023/05/7-united-states-play-desert/386719/

Coast Guard releases summary of 2022 recreational boating statistics
Courtesy of River Management Society

WASHINGTON — During the National Boating Safety Advisory Committee meeting on May 11, 2023 (NBSAC), the U.S. Coast Guard released a summary of statistics on calendar year 2022 recreational boating incidents, revealing that there were 636 boating fatalities nationwide in 2022, a 3.3 percent decrease from the 658 deaths in 2021.

Read more:
https://www.news.uscg.mil/Press-Releases/Article/3398506/coast-guard-releases-summary-of-2022-recreational-boating-statistics/ 

Outdoor Recreation Roundtable Launches New and Improved Website

ORR is proud to kick off Great Outdoors Month® 2023 with the launch of our revamped website. The new site highlights outdoor recreation's role as a solution tool to many of our nation's issues, as well as ORR's mission, programs, and members. It also includes important resources like national and state outdoor recreation economic data, letters and testimony to Congress, rural development tools, workforce modules, webinar recordings, and more.

For more information:  
https://recreationroundtable.org/

Announcing 2022 Achievement Award Winners
Courtesy of NACo

NACo is pleased to announce the winners for the 2023 Achievement Awards. Through the database, winning programs dating back to 2009 are searchable by year, category and state. Check out the searchable database for all kinds of inspiring ideas from county park districts across the nation.

For more information:  
https://www.naco.org/resources/awards-programs/achievement-awards-program-search

Offshore Wind in the Midwest? Some Great Lakes Leaders Think So.
Courtesy of Route 50

By Alex Brown

Years from now, when Chicagoans stroll the Lake Michigan waterfront, they may see the blades of wind turbines glinting on the horizon. Clevelanders could glimpse wind farms over Lake Erie. And cities like Milwaukee and Buffalo could be vying to attract a burgeoning offshore wind industry on the Great Lakes.

That’s the vision some regional leaders have for America’s Third Coast. They see the Midwest’s freshwater seas as 94,000 square miles of untapped potential, boasting consistently strong winds in a region that’s already home to an established manufacturing sector.

Read more:
https://www.route-fifty.com/infrastructure/2023/05/offshore-wind-midwest-some-great-lakes-leaders-think-so/386718/

The Plan to Save Utah’s Great Salt Lake Involves a Big Pipe
Courtesy of Outside Online

Out in Utah’s barren West Desert, on the far side of the Great Salt Lake, sits a silent, mysterious structure that will make a great ruin someday. Scratch that: it already is one.

The three-story industrial building was hastily erected in the late 1980s, at a cost of $60 million, to house a pumping station with an urgent task: to suck water out of the Great Salt Lake and spew it into the desert flats farther west. The lake was then at record-high levels, threatening to flood railway lines, ­interstate highways, and farmland. The pumps were in operation for about two years before nature took over and the lake receded on its own.

More than three decades later, the Great Salt Lake has the opposite problem—too little water. Twenty years into a once-in-a-millennium drought, exacerbated by the ­effects of climate change, the lake level has declined to record lows. Marinas have closed, migratory birds are struggling, and high winds whip up massive dust clouds. The Great Salt Lake crisis has spurred a novel and extreme idea: Why not build a pipeline to bring in water from the ocean to revive and replenish it?

Read more:
https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/great-salt-lake-water-pipeline/?_hsmi=258127895

Ohio opens door to applications for oil and gas drilling underneath state parks
Courtesy of Cleveland.com

By Jeremy Pelzer

After more than a decade of delays, oil and gas drillers will be able start applying Tuesday for permission to drill underneath Ohio state parks and other state-owned lands.

Already, energy companies have expressed interest in drilling under state lands, though it will take at least six months – and possibly much longer than that – before any drilling could start. It’s also unclear how big of a payday Ohio could be in for, and there are already warnings about significant restrictions on how state officials could use any money they get from oil and gas drilling.

Read more:
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2023/05/ohio-opens-door-to-applications-for-oil-and-gas-drilling-underneath-state-parks.html

New Mexico leaders want to block oil and gas on some public lands. Feds consider proposal
Courtesy of Carlsbad Current Argus

By Adrian Hedden

New Mexico elected officials signaled support for proposed federal rules aimed at increasing conservation uses on public land. U.S. Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) and New Mexico Public Lands Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard testified in Congress this week in favor of the proposal by the Bureau of Land Management to establish conservation leases on federal land in the U.S.

The leases would be used alongside others for industrial uses like oil and gas or agriculture, essentially creating easements by conservationists or outdoor recreation companies, where land could be protected from development.

Read more:
https://www.currentargus.com/story/news/2023/05/26/new-mexico-leaders-want-to-block-oil-and-gas-on-some-public-lands/70254143007/

NOHVCC Selects Hildesheim as Executive Director

The National Off-Highway Vehicle will soon have a familiar face at the helm. The NOHVCC Board of Directors has selected long-time Project Manager/Program Director Marc Hildesheim as the next Executive Director of the organization. "I'm very excited to lead NOHVCC on the next leg of its journey and can't wait to see what NOHVCC staff, the Board of Directors, and our partners can achieve," said Hildesheim. 
 
Marc and his family have a long history in OHV recreation starting with the Brush Bunch Motorcycle Club, of which Marc's grandfather was a founding member in 1970. Marc is now a 3rd generation club member with his brother and father.

Read more:
https://nohvcc.org/nohvcc-selects-hildesheim-as-executive-director/

Can Pickleball Save Dying Malls?
Courtesy of Planetizen

By Diana Ionescu 

There are all kinds of plans for what to do with ‘dead malls’ and other largely obsolete buildings. For some, the answer comes in the form of a wildly popular new recreational activity: pickleball. 

Meanwhile, “The number of people playing pickleball grew by 159% over three years to 8.9 million in 2022, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association, a trade group.” But some park users have grumbled at the conversion of other park facilities into dedicated pickleball courts, prompting pickleball court builders to looks elsewhere. “So pickleball is heading to malls, where players can play and then grab a bite to eat or do some shopping, landlords hope.”

Read more:
https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/05/123551-can-pickleball-save-dying-malls

Upcoming Webinars from SORP
Courtesy of the Society of Outdoor Recreation Professionals

June 7th: Outdoors for All - Why We Need to Create a More Inclusive Future for Parks and Recreation, and How to Do It! 
 
June 14th: Boosting LGBTQ Inclusion Outdoors 
 
June 21st: Challenging and Empowering BIPOC Youth through Experiential Education 
 
June 28th: Increasing Accessibility Awareness and Access in the Outdoors with the Outdoor F.U.T.U.R.E. Initiative 

For more information:
https://www.recpro.org/webinars

Webinar: Investing in Active Transportation to Reduce Carbon - Innovative State and Regional Programs

Date: June 21, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm ET
Cost: Free 
Organization: Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC)

Join Rails-to-Trails Conservancy (RTC) and experienced transportation professionals to learn more about the important role trails and active transportation plays in reducing carbon emissions as well as learning about new funding sources, including the Carbon Reduction Program During this webinar, RTC staff will engage in a discussion with Florida DOT Chief Planner, Huiwei Shen, and Denver Regional Council of Government (DRCOG) Project and Program Delivery Manager, Todd Cottrell, to find out how they invest federal and state carbon reduction funding in active transportation and trails. After our panelists provide their perspectives and approaches to the topic, there will be time for audience questions. 

For more information: 
https://railstotrails-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hE6E3xrhTvuO6qLSc4KtCQ?utm#/registration

Webinar: Developing a Program to Reduce Trail Conflicts

Date: June 22, 2023
Time: 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm ET
Cost: Free 
Organization: American Trails

Check out the first webinar on this topic from May 2022: Slow and Say Hello: A Program to Reduce Trail Conflicts and Protect Resources. The presenter explained what their group of volunteers had accomplished in the San Francisco area and encouraged others to duplicate that approach.

Since then, the program has shifted gears to equip land managers with the knowledge and tools they need to create their own program. Their website now offers step by step instructions for creating a conflict reduction program. It also has a page identifying best practices for such a program, what works and what doesn't work. Their organization, The Trail Partners Foundations, is now a 501(c)3.

For more information:
https://www.trailskills.org/training/developing-a-program-to-reduce-trail-conflicts

Register for Supervisors’ Management School
Courtesy of NRPA

Supervisors’ Management School, taking place November 5-10, 2023, is the premier resource for park and recreation professionals who want to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to lead their staff effectively. With the tools and insights gained from this program, professionals will be able to oversee the day-to-day operations of their staff as they deliver programs and services to their community. Whether you’re new to a supervisory role or looking to refresh your skills, this is a great opportunity to improve your abilities and achieve organizational goals.

For more information:  
https://learning.nrpa.org/supervisors-management-school

NEW - Parks & Recreation Assistant Director
County of San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo, CA
$108,992 - $139,090 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 26, 2023

NEW – Director of Parks and Recreation
Louisville Metro Government
Louisville, Kentucky
Salary: Depends on qualifications
Application Deadline: Open until filled

UPDATED - Environmental Health and Safety Compliance Specialist
Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation
Los Gatos, California
$127,439 - $154,926 Annually
Application Deadline: July 5, 2023

Capital Projects Manager II
Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation
Los Gatos, California
$130,411 - $158,516 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 22, 2023

Chief of Operations
Five Rivers MetroParks
Dayton, Ohio
$95,493 - $119,371 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 30, 2023

Director of Recreation and Community Services
City of Patterson, California
$148,941 - $181,039 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 16, 2023

Executive Director
Northbrook Park District, Illinois
$175,000 - $195,000 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 30, 2023

Chief of Philanthropy
Great Parks
Cincinnati, Ohio
$118,279 - $150,284 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 30, 2023

Director of Finance
MetroParks of Butler County
Hamilton, Ohio
$79,050 - $94,860 Annually
Application Deadline: Open until filled
 
Director of Planning
MetroParks of Butler County
Hamilton, Ohio
$79,050 - $94,860 Annually
Application Deadline: Open until filled
 
Program Manager I - Cultural Resources
Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation
Los Gatos, California
$112,1950 - $136,431 Annually
Application Deadline: June 10, 2023

Park Ranger I
Santa Clara County Parks and Recreation
Los Gatos, California
$70,599 - $85,386 Annually
Application Deadline: Jun 6, 2023

For more information:
https://nacpro.mcjobboard.net/jobs

Got a vacancy to fill? 
NACPRO will post your vacancy on our website and email a copy to our mailing list of over 1100 parks and recreation professionals for a fee of $100 for NACPRO members and $200 for non-members.

National Association of County Park and Recreation Officials
PO Box 74, Marienville PA 16239
(814) 927-8212
www.NACPRO.org