I noted with some concern the news that Albert Lea City Manager Chad Adams plans on reintroducing his reorganization plans that involve dissolving the Parks and Recreation Department in place of a different structure of managers and departments. I hope the City Council sustains its earlier decision to block that planned reorganization.

Parks and Recreation as a function of city government, despite the silliness of Amy Poehler’s TV show, are important in a community like Albert Lea. They provide something that touches nearly all of us daily in ways few other city services do, but most especially children. Eliminating Parks and Recreation as a department means the kind of focus it maintains on those two parts of community life will be diminished. The city will no longer be a leader when it comes to activities, sports leagues and facilities for adults or for children. It will be a follower, enabling, sustaining or ignoring the leadership provided by others, like the Y or Community Education.

If efficiency and the “saving of money” it brings requires reorganization of city government’s departments, then find a way to move the functions that make the most sense into Parks and Recreation. Make the new director the assistant city manager with more responsibilities for leadership in the city, with the same staff responsible for both streets and parks. Move the new director of Parks and Recreation to City Hall, if it hasn’t already happened, so she or he can be available for more hands-on supervising when the city manager isn’t available. Or fold the library into Parks and Recreation, with the idea that library services also provide recreation for people, even though the Albert Lea library provides more to this community than a place to read for fun.

I’m not opposed to reorganization, if it actually does make a difference for the better when it comes to serving the residents of Albert Lea. But the idea to shut down Parks and Recreation as a separate department seems unlikely to do that. I hope the answer from the council is firm and resolute. Try something else, but not this.

 

David Behling

Albert Lea