This notion betrays an unfamiliarity with budgeting for Recreation
facilities in neighborhoods beyond our own.
The city has been drifting away from swimming pools across the city. Pools
are increasingly costly to maintain and since Rec budget has been frozen for
many years now, and since the user population of the city is falling, Rec
has been looking for ways to reduce the number of pools. But I see no class
or income pattern to Rec's pool distribution. A new indoor swimming pool was
opened up in North Philadelphia within the last 12 months. Meanwhile, the
only new pool I've seen in Clark Park are the increasingly flooded patches
caused by drastic soil compaction.
Across West Philadelphia in recent years, parks and recreation centers in
working-class neighbors such as Kingsessing Rec and Carroll Park have
received substantial infrastructure investment. Since Clark Park may be the
most intensively used community park in the entire city, and is large in
acreage, it may even be lagging in City investment relative to its user
base.
In general, the "wrong side of the tracks" has received ample infrastructure
goodies from City Government over the last eight years. The electoral base
of the Street Administration owes little or nothing to "wealthy
neighborhoods". And one of the striking feature of University City is how
little political power it wields, compared to more typical Philadelphia
neighborhoods.
In general, neighborhoods that unite politically, whether rich or poor, are
the ones that get the juice. Neighborhoods that squabble and bicker are the
ones that get cut out of the game.
-- Tony West
I believe that once the good areas have separate service districts, the
budgets for less powerful, less wealthy neighborhoods will be slashed.
I gave a good example of this with our local sprayground. While Clark
Park is about to have enormous resources including city resources lavished
on it, the swimming pool so important to the kids that can't afford all of
the private privleges was paved over at 47th south of Woodland. That Rec.
center is on the wrong side of the tracks.
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