Science and Technology of New York City

Kaczynski, Andrew T., and John L. Crompton. “Financing Priorities In Local Governments: Where Do Park And Recreation Services Rank?.” Journal Of Park & Recreation Administration 24.1 (2006): 84-103. Academic Search Complete. Web. 14 Oct. 2012.

John Crompton is a distinguished professor who specializes in marketing and financing in parks, recreation and conservation. Andrew Kazynski is an assistant professor and in the Department of Health Promotion. In this paper they wanted to examine the financial status of parks and recreation compared with other services that the government also provided. They also wanted to see if there were any changes in the financial aspect over the past decade. They got their information from the Census Bureau. In the noncensus years, the data are collected from a survey of approximately 13,000 nonschool local governments, selected by a size-based sampling procedure. The analyses revealed that only approximately one-fifth of the 140 annual change percentages exceeded 5%. Over the 14 years money for parks increased  by 63.2% but among the services provided by the government it only ranked 8th out of the 10. Even though it received such a huge increase, parks still ranked low on the budget list. It just shows how little money it was given before compared to the other services delivered by the government.

Their thesis is that even though parks have seen an increase in budget, it is still not considered high on the list for what government spends on services. The authors are trying to reach out to park and recreation managers so that they gain some insight on how to better position their services in the community. If they want to get more money then they have to change something. A strength in this article is that it provides a lot of statistical to show us clearly how different services are still receiving more funding compared to parks even though parks have seen a dramatic increase in funding. They do a good job of highlighting how little funding parks really have. A weakness is that it would be better if they gave more insight as to why parks are still ranked so low among the competitive services. This article supports our project since it can help us look deeper into why parks get so little funding and where Brooklyn Bridge gets most of it’s funding from.