Adopt a park
By George Winner

The arrival of warmer weather always heightens activity at community parks and playgrounds throughout the Southern Tier- Finger Lakes region. So maybe it's a good time to pose a question like this one: What would happen if a cash-strapped municipality was forced to choose between maintaining a local park or providing other, important community services?

The struggle at the heart of this hypothetical question -- how to address vital community needs with limited financial resources -- is a struggle faced daily in government. It's also the idea behind legislation I'm currently sponsoring in the New York State Senate.

Government, at every level, is an arena of hard choices. District

administrators trying to keep up with the costs of running their schools.

County leaders struggling with out-of-control Medicaid expenses. State and federal officials seeking ways to assist needs in education, criminal justice, health care, transportation and so many other areas. Needs versus resources. That sums up the central challenge facing public officials.

Nowhere is this more true than at the local level, where municipalities face a constant challenge to meet the ever-rising costs of most programs and services.

Sometimes it takes an innovative response.

Consider the example of highway beautification. Every state in America currently sponsors a program commonly known as "Adopt-a-Highway."

Here in New York, our Adopt-a- Highway program was permanently established in 1990. Over the ensuing years the state Department of Transportation (DOT) has established agreements with businesses, service organizations and concerned citizens to keep more than 5,000 miles of New York roadsides free from litter. The department provides safety briefings, safety gear, trash bags and trash collection services. Additionally, it erects blue-and-white

Adopt-a-Highway signs along adopted routes to acknowledge the effort.

There are approximately 2,400 active Adopt-a-Highway agreements in place across New York State.

Adopt-a-Highway has become one of our most recognizable public-private partnerships. It's proven enormously effective at meeting a vital community need in a cost-effective fashion. It has helped ensure that highway beautification didn't take a back seat to highway safety as a government priority. It has improved the environmental quality of thousands of miles of roads. It has provided opportunities for volunteer organizations, service groups, individuals, families, businesses and others to fulfill their sense of civic duty.

Can Adopt-a-Highway serve as a model for other, similar programs?

Legislation that I'm currently sponsoring in the Senate, for example, would create an Adopta Park program in New York State to help municipalities care for and maintain the quality of local parks.

It's been my experience that community residents and organizations re often energized by projects involving neighborhood parks. These projects provide a rallying point for civic pride. An official, state-sponsored Adopt-a- Park program might encourage even greater involvement. The legislation I sponsor, which has been introduced in both houses of the Legislature, would authorize the state Department of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to administer a statewide Adopt-a-Park program for the preservation, maintenance and enhancement of municipally owned parks. Municipalities could obtain technical assistance and guidance from the department in organizing volunteers. The envisioned program would assist volunteers in park maintenance and beautification projects including vandalism remediation, litter removal, trail development and landscaping.

As municipalities continue to face many fiscal challenges in the future, an Adopt-a-Park program could help ensure that the quality of our parks won't fall behind any other local priority. The writer represents the 53rd District in the New York Senate.