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Editor’s Note: This column, “LBWA” (Leadership By Wandering Around), is based on the premise that, in order to find out what’s going on in the field, a parks and rec leader has to leave his or her desk and “wander around” the area of operations, talk to people, ask questions, and kick around ideas with the individuals in the thick of delivering services to the public. So the author will bring up issues and ask the leaders among the readership to share their knowledge and experiences.
As we all struggle through these times of epic-proportion financial crisis, it’s easy to become pessimistic. But for those of us who are centric in nature and try to find the compromises in life, there is a “glass half-full” aspect of these tough times.
I’ve seen some fairly convincing recreation-oriented examples of how people rise to the occasion and do the things that have to be done to keep their quality-of-life stable in spite of changes that would otherwise reduce it.
Here’s a good example: We have a park popularly called “Three Ponds” because it has a series of three ponds tiered in a high-, middle- and low-pond arrangement. The ponds sit in the midst of several neighborhoods, and are a crossroads of our 100-mile golf-cart path system. The highest pond catches all the runoff from a wide area, and thus has silted up and become more shallow, leading to a proliferation of aquatic weeds called “parrot feather.”