City's parks experience a renaissance

Third in a series of occasional articles examining the mayor's performance on major issues during his 12 years in office.

The city doesn't provide Wiffle balls, bats, or basketballs the way it used to at Brighton's Portsmouth Street playground. And the fulltime city caretakers are long gone, too. But 55-year-old John Bruno said he hasn't seen the park this well-maintained for decades.

Where there were crumbling concrete bleachers, there is now a lush blanket of grass, and where there was a muddy mess of weeds, there is now a state-of-the-art, redclay baseball diamond. Before Mayor Thomas M. Menino took office in 1993, Bruno said, the playground didn't even have a trash can.

''Lookit, not only do they have barrels, but they have trash bags in them,'' Bruno said one night last week, a note of incredulity in his voice, as he sat on a bench near the baseball diamond. ''It's nice down here."

During his 12 years in office, Menino has spent more than $110 million on construction and renewal of Boston parks and playgrounds. He has added some 166 acres of green space and initiated programs such as Shakespeare on the Common and Boston Pops at Franklin Park. And the self-styled urban mechanic has earned high marks from many residents and from parks advocates. In 2000, Boston's park system was named one of three ''four-star" urban park systems in the nation by the Trust for Public Land and the Urban Land Institute, based on green space, parks funding per capita, and creative use of open space.

''I'm so proud of what we've done," Menino said in a recent interview. ''People are amazed by what they look like."

Some battles remain, though. Some parks are plagued with litter and graffiti, and several high-profile crimes have drawn intense public scrutiny of safety in city parks. Some park advocates also worry that the mayor's massive capital investment is being eroded by an anemic budget for upkeep, threatening the improvements he has made.

While the park system has increased in size, the number of maintenance employees has been cut from 171 in 2001 to 152; the number of park rangers is down from 26 to 10; and the parks operating budget as a percentage of total city spending has been level since 1997, according to the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded watchdog group that monitors city spending. It was 0.6 percent of the city budget that year, and it's 0.6 percent this year.

''They've been kind of barely getting by," said Patrice Todisco, a parks advocate and former executive director of the Boston GreenSpace Alliance.

Parks officials are doing more with less, something Commissioner Antonia Pollak calls creative management. She has been forced to rely more heavily on the private sector and the good will of committed residents to take over stewardship of neighborhood parks. The number of volunteer parks groups has grown from 60 to 87 during the past five years.

''It's a challenge every day," Pollak said in a recent interview.

Some parks advocates say it's a recipe that could spell trouble in the future, if public interest wanes and if maintenance isn't better funded.

''You're going to end up with run-down, decrepit, vacant, or, worst-case scenario, abused physical spaces," said Ruth Feldman, chairwoman of the board at the GreenSpace Alliance.

For now, though, the city's 2,366 acres of parks, playgrounds, and tot lots appear to be examples of the mayor's commitment to grass-roots neighborhood issues.

Globe reporters visited a dozen city parks, one in each of the city's police districts, with a checklist of assessment criteria. They visited each park once during the day and once at night during the last week of July and first week of August.

With the exception of American Legion Playground in East Boston, where broken glass was strewn across a children's play area and knee-high weeds sprouted through a crumbling set of bleachers, the parks appeared well-maintained. Trees were trimmed and healthy, grass was mowed, and few had notable litter problems.

Residents said that where drunken vagrants once scared teenage players at a baseball diamond at Doherty/Gibson Playground in Dorchester, the field is now a haven for at-risk youth in the neighborhood. And where vandals once scrawled offensive graffiti at Christopher Columbus Park in the North End, now dozens of visitors lounge on park benches under the shade of pink and white wisteria winding around a spotless, white trellis.

''We come down here every chance we get," said 80-year-old Vincent Grassia, sharing a bench with a friend one afternoon. ''We have something to eat, we enjoy the sights."

Nearly 20 years ago, Boston's park system was suffering from neglect, according to ''The Greening of Boston," a report issued in 1987 by The Boston Foundation. In 1982, the parks budget was slashed to the equivalent of what the city spent in 1912 (adjusted for inflation), and parks employees were described as demoralized.

At the Portsmouth Street Playground in Brighton, Bruno remembers it well. He used to walk through the park to get to his mother's house on Western Avenue. A caretakers' building, where he and his boyhood friends used to check out sports equipment and where two full-time maintenance workers had once been assigned, had been bulldozed. The park was littered with broken glass, tire marks marred whatever grass was left, and homeless people slept and drank in the park.

''It was dilapidated," said Bruno, who has lived within a half-mile of the park for all of his 55 years. ''There was just nothing going on."

The transformation began under Mayor Raymond L. Flynn, who initiated a $75 million capital improvement plan in the mid-1980s. Menino, who had been part of the working group that issued the ''Greening of Boston" report, ratcheted up the city's commitment to parks after he succeeded Flynn.

His administration helped turn 100 acres of landfill in West Roxbury into Millennium Park. The Frog Pond in the Public Garden was transformed from a concrete wasteland into a pond and ice skating rink. And the Parks Department spearheaded restoration efforts for the Muddy River and Emerald Necklace. During the past five years, 51 play lots, 33 ball fields, and 59 basketball and tennis courts have been added or restored.

There is much more left to do, parks officials acknowledge. In a city survey of parks conducted from 1998 to 2000, residents said safety was one of their biggest concerns. The shooting last year of an 11-year-old boy during football practice at Carter Playground in Roxbury, and the slaying of a youth basketball coach a few blocks away at Ramsay Park spurred a public outcry that was further sharpened earlier this year by the killing of a park activist in Dorchester.

John Beresford, cochairman of the Friends of Ronan Park, was stabbed to death after a mugging in the park, on the day before the mayor was scheduled to review improvements the Friends group had spearheaded.

Pollak said that without money for more staff to patrol parks, she has worked with Boston police and Municipal police to coordinate patrols and improve safety in the parks. Pollak has also enlisted social service programs to help with homeless and drug-abuse problems in the parks.

Another area ripe for improvement is the city's antiquated fountains, which have been draining thousands of dollars each year from the parks budget.

Fifteen of them are non-circulating, meaning the water runs for months. The city has paid nearly $1.5 million in water bills since 2000. The cost for fountain water cannot be separated out, so it's unclear how much would be saved by outfitting fountains with circulating water systems.

Mary Hines, director of external affairs for the Parks Department, says the project will cost millions of dollars that the city just doesn't have right now.

Parks advocate Eugenie Beal says she gives Menino a B-plus on parks. Beal, founder and chairwoman of the board of the Boston Natural Areas Network, lauded the mayor's capital spending, but says he'll have to spend more on maintenance to get an A.

''We need to have not just adequate maintenance, but superior maintenance," said Beal, 80, who has worked on parks through three mayoral administrations.

''It's like restoring an old house -- you've got a lot of capital expenses, but you've got to get to the point where every year you spend the right amount to keep it going," she said.

Menino says he likes having something to reach for. ''You never should be satisfied," he said.

As Bruno sat in the Portsmouth Street playground last week, marveling at the transformation, he couldn't help smiling. His wife was playing softball on the red clay baseball diamond.

''Gee, it's looking good," he said. ''There's nobody drinking beer. It's well-maintained. This is the way I remember it."

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslack@globe.com. Previous articles in this series appeared on May 22 and Aug. 2.