Neighbors go green, raising cash for parks

Tom Boyden was dismayed by the scraggly park across the street from his house when he moved to the South End a few years ago. Its wrought iron fence had deteriorated, the weed-ridden groundcover hid ''a multitude of sins" -- empty beer bottles, stolen wallets, and credit cards. So Boyden and some neighbors decided to raise $200,000 to fix it up.

''I realized it was something the parks department just didn't have the money to do," he said. ''We would have to look within the community, to volunteers, neighborhood associations, and foundations."

Twenty years after the city made a massive investment to clean up its badly neglected parks, an increasing share of the responsibility for maintaining the city's green spaces is shifting from public to private hands, park advocates say. As anemic budgets have depleted the parks department's maintenance staff, Park Partners groups are proliferating around the city, and neighbors are doing everything from weeding to raking to watering to picking up trash to raising thousands of dollars to pay for new plants and equipment.

While most agree the community should help care for the parks, some worry that the city is too willing to rely heavily on private groups to handle routine parks maintenance.

''What you see is this persistent decline, and at the same time, parks are more and more important to people," said Patrice Todisco, executive director of the Esplanade Association and former director of the Boston GreenSpace Alliance. ''So that's why you'll see more and more friends groups stepping up to the plate to fill in the gaps. Which isn't necessarily the best solution, because parks are public infrastructure. You don't want to see private dollars replacing public dollars."

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said that with shrinking budgets, the city is left with little choice but to rely on neighborhood organizations. They should take an increasing role in maintaining them, he said.

''With the Park Partners, with the ownership of the community, sometimes those parks are maintained and protected much better than if just the city had the responsibility for them," he said.

City parks were among the beneficiaries of a surging economy during much of the past decade, getting $75 million in improvements, such as new playing fields and playground equipment in the last seven years alone, according to city officials. But since 2002, with hits to Boston's budget, the parks maintenance staff has declined from 173 to 152. A parks budget that had increased by a third between 1999 and 2003, was slashed 9 percent the following year.

When Menino announced this year he would give away $250,000 in money left over from the Democratic National Convention for small grants to parks groups this year, 169 applications requesting $475,000 arrived in a matter of weeks.

''That just reflects the fact that there is such an unmet need for capital repairs," said Betsy Johnson, a board member of the Boston GreenSpace Alliance.

Johnson said that even if public funds are short, Menino should use the power of the bully pulpit to solicit large contributions from big donors.

''When he wanted to make sure he defeated the elected school committee, he had no trouble raising over $100,000. When he wanted to have the DNC here, he had no trouble raising from the private sector the $1 million he's now giving away."

Johnson, Boyden, and other park advocates praised the parks department, and its commissioner, Antonia Pollak, for regularly meeting with park groups, helping them apply for grants and responding to their concerns as quickly as they could.

According to department projections, 75 percent of maintenance requests will be completed on schedule this year, compared with 63 percent two years ago.

Still, some neighbors say they increasingly rely on one another to keep their parks clean.

''I feel like every year we seem to take on a little bit more and a little bit more," said Sherwood Hughes, who heads the Blackstone-Franklin Square Neighborhood Association in the South End.

Joe Park and his wife formed the Friends of Hayes Park, whose members devote 1,400 hours a year to mowing lawns, tending roses, and maintaining playground equipment by agreement with the city.

Park, who is retired, even takes out the trash. He is proud of his work and does it cheerfully, but he also realizes what would happen if the group did not exist.

''The park would go to hell in a hand basket, unless someone else took it over," Park said.

The city used to give the Friends of Hayes Park $400 a year to help maintain the park, he said. That amount was cut in half in the late 1990s. A few years ago, the city's contribution stopped coming altogether.

Meanwhile, the Friends of Hayes Park raise $15,000 to $25,000 annually through fund-raisers and donations. They squirrel away whatever they can for an endowment fund.

''The theory was that one day, I would be able to retire from this fund-raising business and that the interest that we generated from these fund-raisers would in essence pay for the maintenance of the park," he said. ''Well, that hasn't happened yet. What we're finding is obviously, as we get older, more things can go wrong, [or] just have to be maintained."

In Franklin Park in Roxbury, the Franklin Park Coalition recruits at least 500 volunteers a year to help with park maintenance, said Christine Poff, its executive director.

But she said that while the city regularly mows the grass and empties the trash cans, the coalition is still struggling to handle the larger task of caring for the forest.

''It can't all be done by volunteers," she said. ''We don't have a water truck, and we can't drive one. We can't use heavy power equipment. Last year our teenagers moved piles of woodchips that had been sitting there for years -- it took them three six-hour days, with 10 to 12 kids. With equipment, you could come in and do it in an hour, and that's a huge difference. We've experienced the limits of manual labor."

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.