[Apropos chubby kids, an interesting article on the later trajectory of city-centered socialism. Most people who visit NY -- heck, maybe even most people who live here -- don't realize our public pools are still free.]
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/nyregion/09recreation.html
The New York Times
July 9, 2007
Difficult Choices for the Old Rec Center
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
For almost 40 years, the La Guardia recreation center, known in its
Lower East Side neighborhood as the Whitehouse, has sat vacant
abandoned in the middle of a densely populated high-rise public housing
complex.
The Parks Department said it has no plans to reopen the Whitehouse, in
the La Guardia Houses complex, because it believes the neighborhood
already has enough public and private recreational facilities. The same
goes for a second abandoned recreation center near the Baruch Houses.
The story of the Whitehouse demonstrates how policy has changed the way
children play. The organized baseball, basketball and soccer leagues
that now dominate youth sports often exclude children too poor to
afford the required fees. And the onetime reliance on government has
shifted to a dependence on private nonprofit groups.
Parks Department officials acknowledged that the agency has largely
ceded its role as the nations preeminent provider of free youth
recreational services. That role began in 1902 when the city assumed
operations of Seward Park on the Lower East Side, which became the
first municipally run playground in the United States, complete with
staff members who worked with children and organized games and
activities.
The change has been part of a larger cultural transformation.
After-school programs run by nonprofit organizations many intended to
boost test scores, childrens advocacy organizations say have replaced
purely recreational activities.
There was a realization that there was a need that the Parks Department
could not meet, said Adrian Benepe, the city parks commissioner. We
need a more sophisticated model. The old model of counting on the Parks
and Recreation Department to hand out basketballs at gyms ended
sometime in the 1980s.
In 1978, the department spent $12.3 million on recreation programs; in
the fiscal year that began July 1, the city appropriated $15.5 million
to recreation about 5 percent of the Parks Departments $355.5 million
budget. (The city would need to allocate more than $38 million in 2007
dollars to equal what it spent in 1978.)
Further, since the late 1970s, the number of full-time recreation
workers has fallen by more than 50 percent to 340 this year from 766 in
1978, according to city budget documents.
During that time, the century-old tradition of having Parks Department
employees supervise children at playgrounds after school and on
weekends has all but disappeared. The number of recreational
supervisors dropped to 11 in 2005 from 86 in 1991, according to budget
figures. (The Parks Department did not provide current data or a
breakdown of the job categories of its recreation employees.)
Mr. Benepe said the department now gives more emphasis to providing
after-school tutoring for children and has established a series of
environmental education programs and nature centers where the emphasis
is not on physical activity.
The new paradigm has shifted away from rec centers, said Mr. Benepe. Is
there a need? Are they still needed in 2007? In 2010?
But some said the Parks Departments scaling back of traditional
recreation programs was unfortunate, considering rising obesity in
school-age children.
Surveys by the City Department of Education in 2005 and 2006 found that
42 percent of Bronx elementary school students were overweight and 25
percent were considered obese. A 2005 Centers for Disease Control study
found that 30 percent of Bronx high school students were overweight.
The infrastructure took a big hit during the fiscal crisis in the 70s
and never really recovered, said Michelle Yanche, the director of the
Neighborhood Family Services Coalition, a private nonprofit
organization that represents advocacy groups and service providers. The
growth in the past 10 years has not been on recreation, it has been on
education; there is a real recognition that something has gone wrong
because of the rising obesity rates.
Gail Nayowith, the executive director of the Citizens Committee for
Children, a private nonprofit advocacy group, said that when the Parks
Department ran the vast majority of the citys recreation programs, few
private groups were doing similar work.
Ms. Nayowith said, however, that the current situation has led to gaps
in services, especially in poor neighborhoods. Many private groups that
offer recreational services, including the Y.M.C.A., typically charge
membership fees.
In places where we have concentrations of the poor and have significant
economic disadvantage, we have to think about the need to accommodate
the recreational and cultural needs of the community, especially in a
city that has a $5 billion surplus, she said. The available park space
and playground space is not distributed equally across neighborhoods.
So while there is plenty to do, it still doesnt meet demand.
In 2002, the Parks Department began charging adults to use 22 of its
formerly free recreation centers, and in 2006 extended the fees to its
six remaining free centers, each in one of the citys poorest
neighborhoods. The revenue, however, has fallen short of projections,
in part because the new $50 to $75 annual charge for adults has led to
a drop in adult attendance while the number of children, who are
admitted free, has remained steady, according to city statistics.
In fiscal 2006, some 21,100 adults had memberships at recreation
centers; after the fees were imposed at the six centers, the number
fell to 11,500 within four months.
The 28 recreation centers, which in some neighborhoods, according to
people who use them, have the only dependable air conditioning during
the summer (they are often used as cooling centers during heat waves),
are generally closed Sundays and Saturdays after 4 p.m., and lines for
the swimming pools can swell to several hundred.
In some neighborhoods, the Parks Department has been trying to meet
demand. The department announced in April that it would reopen within
the next several years the McCarren Park swimming pool in Greenpoint,
Brooklyn, which has been closed since 1984. It also plans to extend
hours at the Metropolitan Pool, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and open a
new recreation center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens. And on
Wednesday, it opened a floating pool on a barge moored off Brooklyn
Heights.
The department also plans to dispatch a mobile fitness van this summer
to parts of Queens that it has identified as needing more recreational
services.
In the meantime, several public schools opened their playgrounds to
children this month as part of Mayor Michael R. Bloombergs PlaNYC
initiative, which has the goal of eventually opening 290 playgrounds
when schools are not in session. The initiative pointed out that 97 of
188 city neighborhoods, most of them poor, fail to meet the citys own
standard of providing at least 1.5 acres of park space for every 1,000
people and one playground for every 1,250 children.
Groups like the City Parks Foundation, an independent nonprofit group
that offers recreation and arts programs in all five boroughs, and the
Police Athletic League have also expanded their free programs for
children this summer.
The P.A.L. now operates about the same number of recreation centers as
the Parks Department: the league has 23 year-round youth centers and 28
other centers that operate only during the school year. The Parks
Department operates 28 recreation centers, along with about 20
community centers and field houses that are open only part of the year.
On the Lower East Side, residents said the front line of the battles
against obesity and crime is to reopen the Whitehouse, which was locked
behind a chain-link fence as children played in the crowded playgrounds
around it.
Its an affront to the community visually, but also an affront because
it is telling the community that even though we have the money now and
are not opening it, that they dont count, said Alan J. Gerson, the City
Council member who represents the area.
Mr. Benepe said that no one aside from Mr. Gerson had expressed
interest in reopening the Whitehouse, and that he had not recommended
that it be demolished only because he did not want to ruin his
impossible dream, referring to Mr. Gerson.
But on an evening in June, some 80 people showed up outside the
building to discuss why the recreation center was necessary.
Teenage basketball players said they had few options to play late into
the evenings, after an outdoor court in the La Guardia Houses complex
was closed when residents complained about noise. Officials from nearby
Gouverneur Skilled Nursing Facility, Diagnosis and Treatment Center
said they would like to use part of the Whitehouse for community health
programs. Chinese immigrants said they wanted a safe place to play
Ping-Pong. People who attend a nearby senior center said it was so
crowded that they had to eat their meals in shifts. Elementary school
children said other recreation centers were too far away and required
them to cross busy streets. Police officers said gang problems in the
area including several shootings in the past several weeks might be
alleviated if there was a place for neighborhood children to go.
We would go to school, and come home and play there until supper time,
and go home and eat, and come back until it closed, said Lucille
Frazier, 72, who has lived in the La Guardia Houses for 50 years. A
whole new generation is coming up that has nothing to do.