The East Lansing Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission will invite community members to participate in workshops to help determine where the community’s priorities should lie.
The commission is holding the community forum workshops for the first time since 2006 to gather input for the city’s Park, Recreation, Open Space and Greenways Plan, said Wendy Wilmers Longpre, the East Lansing Parks, Recreation & Arts assistant director.
The plan covers all facilities and programs available for parks and recreation in the city of East Lansing as well as the community centers, greenways and open space and is updated every five years to keep in touch with community interest and the city budget.
Community members will offer two different workshop times at 7 p.m. March 7 and March 23 in the Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbot Road, to gather in a group setting to share what they think should be prioritized in the plan should the commission’s budget decrease. She said no budget cuts have been made yet, but the commission is working to prepare just in case.
“(The commission has) not been requested to cut our budget at this point in time, but we’ve made it within the parameters that we normally would,” Wilmers Longpre said.
She said she hoped many community members would be able to make it to one of the forums and said the commission welcomes any interested residents of the community to share their opinions.
“We encourage anybody to come out who’s interested in parks and recreation programs and services,” Wilmers Longpre said. “We’d love to see a wide variety of residents join us for this activity.”
In the East Lansing City Council’s March 1 meeting, Councilmember Roger Peters said the Parks and Recreation Advisory Commission went through the same process five years ago and would attempt to find out what direction the community wanted to go in terms of parks and recreation while keeping potential budget cuts in mind.
“Last time (the workshops were held), the commission was looking more in the direction of expansion,” Peters said at the meeting. “Now the commission is looking more at how to maintain (the current programs).”
The community workshops likely will help initiate important communication between the city and community about parks and recreational services if the event is advertised well enough, digital rhetoric and professional writing junior Noelle Sciarini said.
Sciarini said she’s utilized the East Lansing park systems before with her family and said she thinks funding should continue.
“My family’s from this area, and we go to a lot of the different parks around here,” Sciarini said. “I think they should keep funding them for sure.”
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