Star Tribune Letters: Keep It Independent
We agree with Minneapolis Park Board President Jon Olson's comments (Star Tribune, Dec. 18) regarding the importance of an independent Park Board.
Visionary leaders established the independent Minneapolis Park Board in 1883, not only to facilitate the city's award-winning park system but especially to protect it away from the priorities of city budgets and city business.
Our independently elected Park Board is the envy of park systems across America. In his book "The American City: What Works and What Doesn't," Alexander Garvin, a Yale professor and a New York City planning commissioner, says, "The best-located, best-financed, best-designed, best-maintained public open space in America is the Minneapolis Park System."
It is a monumental task to maintain and manage a park system so grand as ours while adjusting it to the changing needs of today's residents and visitors to the city.
It would be shortsighted to dissolve the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. The lack of understanding for this form of governance, so necessary to protect and preserve our legacy of parks and recreation, coupled with citizen apathy, puts the system's future at great risk.
Joan Berthiaume and Ted Wirth, cofounders, Minneapolis Parks Legacy Society, Minneapolis.