City Budget
Fairmount Park is the largest park fully within city limits in the country and one of the most underfunded. The Park Commission testified before City Council on its budget for fiscal year 2009. A boost in funding has been proposed by the Nutter administration but nothing is set in stone yet.
By Alex Schmidt
WHYY News, April 1, 2008
For twenty years, funding for Fairmount Park has remained flat resulting in a decrease when inflation is taken into account. The biggest park fully within the boundaries of a city in the country, it is also one of the most poorly funded.
Mayor Nutter has proposed increasing the park system's funding by 40 percent over the next five years. To pay for that, Budget Director Stephen Agostini is hoping City Council will pass a parking tax increase. The Park Commission plans to use $2.5 million of its funding increase to hire additional staff and plant over 25,000 trees.
Agostini noted that the funding is contingent on the approval of the parking tax.
"If for whatever reason the parking tax does not move forward, we would ask that those expenditures be taken out from the budgets of both Fairmount Park and Streets because we wouldn't have the funding sources available for that," said Agostini.
The five percent boost in the parking tax would result in an increase of about sixty cents per day for the average cost of $12 to park in Center City. Councilman Bill Green supports the increase in funding for Fairmount Park but isn't convinced about the parking tax proposal.
"There are lost of ways to increase revenue from parking or parking at meters rather than from the parking tax, which I fear will have a negative impact on restaurants and other activity, night life, and weekend activity in the city," said Green."
Green also commented that he is unsure whether he will vote for or against the parking tax increase.
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