City of Atlanta CDP

Funding

Anticipated Future Conditions

Alternate funding sources will have to be identified to supplement DPRCA's current general fund allocation. Several avenues hold promise.  They include a General Obligation Bond (GO Bond), increasing the Park Improvement Fund, increasing the Annual GO bond, use of impact fee revenues, and the establishment of a parks endowment.  Several financing trends of the last decade promise to play important roles in shaping the financial management of parks in the future.  These include:  leasing of major facilities, joint-use of facilities, and private sector support.  The successful leasing of facilities, such as City golf courses, Lakewood Fairgrounds and the Civic Center Convention Hall, is encouraging and will likely become a standard operation and maintenance method in the future.  Joint-use of facilities is not a new idea, but is being resurrected as even more attractive to potential project partners as the price of real estate in Atlanta rises.  Many private sector groups and corporations have volunteered to support and develop a number of parks projects over the last ten years.

Current Policies

Financing Alternatives

1. Use greenspace and greenway acquisition funds to leverage funds offered by private and public partners.
2. Finance parkland acquisition by acquiring large tracts of open space and sell appropriate residential home sites to overlook a centralized park.  Use the resulting revenues to pay for the open space acquisition.
3. Utilize conservation easements for greenway acquisition.
4. Use, where appropriate, special taxes and districts such as community improvement districts (CIDs), special tax districts (STDs), and tax allocation districts (TADs) to increase the quantity of, and improve the maintenance of, parks and public open space.
5. Utilize the existing Planned Development (PD) zoning regulations as a means to maximize public open space potential.
6. Develop and program all elementary schools jointly with neighborhood parks, and       high schools with community parks, where appropriate, to make maximum use of city property taxes.

Legislation

1. Pass State legislation to increase the GO Bond that the City can issue annually from $8 million to $12 million and dedicate $4 million annually to capital projects for parks.
2. Pass a Citywide referendum for a $50 million GO Bond dedicated to open space acquisition and development projects identified in this plan ($5 million per year for 10 years).
3. Increase the Park Improvement (PI) Fund from .54 mil (approximately $6 million annually) to a full 1 mil (approximately $12 million annually) and dedicate the full PI Fund millage to City parks capital improvements.
4. Increase the sidewalk width requirements in Downtown, Midtown, Buckhead, and other commercial areas to a minimum of fifteen feet to increase public open space.

Private Support

1. Establish a Parks Alliance [PAL] to oversee private funding for implementation of the Parks, Open Space and Greenways Plan.
2. Establish a parks endowment under the auspices of the proposed Parks Alliance.
3. Support the PATH Foundation to act as an agent of the City to assist the City in the implementation of the City of Atlanta Greenway Trails Corridor Plan.
4. Utilize community service programs to augment maintenance staff resources in City parks.
5. Continue to support and utilize Trees Atlanta in planting trees in public rights-of-way, on public lands, and in parking lots that are required to meet the regulations of the parking lot landscape ordinance.
6. Continue to support communities who apply for private foundation grants for park and greenspace acquisition and improvements in their neighborhoods.

Park Impact Fees

Park impact fee policies presented in this section are a summary of policies provided in two source documents: (1) "Technical Analysis of Parks and Recreation Facilities for Impact Fee Policy Purposes," based on findings of the Impact Fees Study, City of Atlanta, Georgia, 1993, by James Duncan and Associates and others, and (2) a resolution by the Human Resources, Community Development and Finance Committees which establishes policies for the use of park impact fees. 

Park impact fee revenues cover only the costs of acquisition and development of land, but not construction of buildings or other facilities.  Policies are presented under the following headings: existing facilities, service areas, levels of service, capital costs, revenue credits, and fee schedule.

Service Areas

1. Three parks and recreational service areas have been defined.  They are Northside, Westside, and Southside.
2. In order to avoid creating significant existing deficiencies, the boundaries of service areas are drawn so that the level of service for individual service areas is as close as possible to the existing citywide average.
3. Each of the service areas should have significant growth potential in order to justify the need for impact-fee expenditures.

Existing Facilities

For the purposes of calculating park impact fees, the City's park inventory consists of 3,200 acres of land, and includes block, neighborhood and community parks; conservation parks and nature preserves; and golf courses and other special recreational facilities. Excluded, however, are the Civic Center, Lakewood Amphitheater and Fairgrounds, land leased by the City at Lake Allatoona and land owned or leased by the City outside the city limits.

Levels of Service

1. Park impact fees are based on level-of-service standards that relate acres of parkland to functional population ("full-time equivalent" people present in the City).

2. The level of service should be established no higher than the existing level of service in each service area.

3. The City adopts a single level of service of 5.75 acres per 1,000 functional population for each service area.  The adopted level of service leaves existing excess capacity in each of the three service areas.

4. Because of existing excess capacity at the recommended level of service, and in order to ensure that impact fees adopted by the City are competitive with other jurisdictions, the City adopts a policy to charge only 50 percent of the full cost of acquiring and developing park land in the Northside service area.

5. The cost of constructing facilities was excluded from the fee calculations in order to ensure competitiveness and to be conservative in the calculation of recoupment fees.

6. Because of the City's policy of encouraging growth in the Southside and Westside areas and because these areas have considerable excess capacity, the City policy is to charge only 50 percent of the full cost of park land acquisition and development in the Southside and Westside service areas.

7. The Georgia Development Impact Fee Act requires service-area-by- service-area policy decisions, which allows for differential assessment levels even without legislative findings.

8. These discounted fees will be recoupment fees that essentially reimburse the City for excess capacity that already exists to accommodate new development. 

9. The City adopts the policy that all recoupment fees will be used to reimburse other non-recoupment impact-fee accounts for exemptions, with the remaining park recoupment funds to be spent for parks and recreation purposes in the service areas in which they were collected.

10. Because of limited excess capacity in these areas, the park fees in the Northside and Westside service areas will be recoupment for only the next seven to eight years.

Capital Costs

1. The City has decided to adopt park impact fees only to cover the cost of parkland and development, but not to cover facility costs. 
2. The average cost of acquiring an acre of land for park purposes in the south and western portions of the City has been about $10,000 per acre in current dollars.  For the Northside service area, the figure is $46,047.  The total development cost per acre has been determined to be $43,000; thus; the cost for purchase and development of parkland in the Southside and Westside is $53,422 ($10,000+43,000) and on the Northside is $89,047 ($46,047+43,000).  Those figures will be used in calculating impact fees.

Use of Park Impact Fee Revenues

1. The City will only use Park Impact Fees to fund projects that meet the following criteria:

   • The project is identified in the City's Comprehensive Development Plan,

   • The project will expand the capacity of the City's park system so as to accommodate future development, and is identified as such in the Capital Improvements Program, and

   • The project involves the acquisition and/or development of parkland rather than the construction of recreation facilities.

2. The City shall assign priority to projects for which City funds will leverage equal or greater amounts of state, federal, and/or private funds.

3. The City shall reserve three percent of park impact fee revenues for the purpose of funding administrative costs associated with the collection and use of said revenues.

Current Programs

Greenspace Funding Sources

The following have been identified as potential funding sources for the City of Atlanta’s Greenspace Program:

• Georgia Greenspace Fund

• Consent Decree, Greenway Acquisition Project
• Park Impact Fees
• 2000 Quality of Life Bond
• Georgia DOT’s Wetland Mitigation Banking Program
• General Fund
• Grants
• Donations
• Atlanta/Fulton Land Bank Authority
• Land and Water Conservation Funds
• Park Improvement Fund
• Transportation Enhancement Monies
• Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)
• Foundations

The following organizations provide both funding and in-kind services toward maintenance and improvement of the parks:

Park Pride

Park Pride, Inc. is a nonprofit, volunteer organization established in 1986 to build civic and corporate support for City of Atlanta parks.  The organization works to preserve, enhance, and promote parks and green spaces and to encourage acquisition and development of new parks and green spaces.  Park Pride Atlanta oversees the "Adopt-A-Park" program, in which corporate sponsors and neighborhood, civic, youth, and senior groups assume responsibility for park maintenance and improvements.  This system is key to the success of small parks, which are valued by communities but are expensive and difficult for the City of Atlanta to maintain.

Piedmont Park Conservancy

The Piedmont Park Conservancy is a nonprofit organization working with the City of Atlanta and neighborhood and civic associations to develop a strategy for private investment in the expansion and revitalization of Piedmont Park. This effort is an example of a public-private partnership for investment in parks Citywide.

Path Foundation

The PATH Foundation is a nonprofit organization formed in 1991 to design, capitalize and build the greenway trails system proposed by the City.  PATH has worked with the Mayor's Green Ribbon Committee and the Bureau of Planning in developing the City of Atlanta Greenway Trail Corridor Plan. 

Freedom Park Conservancy

In 1997, CAUTION, Inc., the nonprofit neighborhood organization responsible for the re-design of Freedom Parkway, was re-incorporated as the Freedom Park Conservancy/CAUTION, Inc.  The community-based Conservancy is working with the City to develop and maintain Freedom Park.

Grant Park Conservancy

The Grant Park Conservancy is committed to the restoration, beautification and preservation of historic Grant Park.  The Grant Park Conservancy is a non-profit volunteer organization that raises funds independently, organizes volunteer work groups and builds a cohesive constituency to accomplish its mission.  The purpose is to work in tandem with the City of Atlanta Bureau of Parks with regard to the implementation of the Master Plan (adopted by the City Council of Atlanta in May 1998). The Conservancy works within the parameters of the Master Plan.

Olmsted Linear Park Alliance

The Olmsted Linear Park Alliance is working with the Bureau of Parks to implement a master plan for all sections of the Olmsted Linear Park.  To date, the Alliance has raised $1.7 million for the Oak Grove section and $800,000 for the Shadyside and Dellwood sections.

Note:  In addition to the projects listed in the Current and New Projects and Programs lists below, all existing parks properties are included in the CDP by default for maintenance and improvements purposes.  A Key to the abbreviations under the Funding Source column is shown below.

Key to Funding Source Abbreviations

2004 Current Projects and Programs

Project List 13-1: 2004 CDP Parks and Recreation Current Programs and Projects

2004 New Projects and Programs

2004 New, Completed and Deleted Programs and Projects

Project List 13-2: 2004 CDP Parks and Recreation COMPLETED Programs and Projects

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