Parks board wants more public engagement on Zilker nonprofit idea

This week, the city’s Parks and Recreation Board recommended further public engagement surrounding the Zilker Vision Plan; in particular, the plan’s proposal to create a “unified umbrella nonprofit” to serve as a point of contact for the park .

“The public engagement process for the Zilker Park Vision plan was seriously flawed and not representative of Austin’s overall resident park goers,” the resolution reads. “No one, or almost no one, during the public engagement process, asked for or supported the further privatization of Zilker Park management and operations.”

The resolution notes that the parks board does not support forming an umbrella nonprofit to operate Zilker, and recommends that another public engagement process be established to “discern the type of entity, if any, the public feels is appropriate to have a role” in Zilker operations and management.

“I have a ton of questions that are unanswered,” Chair Laura Cottam Sajbel said. “One of the things that concerns me, that I’ve heard from the public, is their concern that there are people at the table that are vendors and nonprofits.”

Roy Waley of the Sierra Club spoke against the plan during public comment. “It’s a 50-year vision plan,” he said. “Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like it’s 50 years in the past instead of into the future.”

Bill Bunch of the Save Our Springs Alliance urged the board to schedule another meeting so that community members could give additional feedback on the plan without a one-minute time limit. He criticized the way the design team conducted its public engagement.

“All of the survey questions throughout was one giant push poll to get people to support building a whole bunch of stuff that people really didn’t want,” he said. “Thank you for demanding that we actually get the public input data because as much as they tried to push us to say what they wanted us to say, I think that data will show that people want to restore and protect the park to protect Barton Springs.”

Other speakers questioned how the plan would change their park-going experience, and criticized the engagement process as opaque and not being representative of the community.

Karen Blizzard is the project manager of the Zilker Collective Impact Working Group, a coalition of 16 nonprofits and two kayak vendors who operate in or adjacent to Zilker Park. She said the implication that the group’s work has been impacted by commercial influences is “incorrect.”

“We commend the design workshop and the city team for their impressive work in compiling a vast amount of community input,” she said. “Our group provided input through the public process, which we felt was very robust. I think tonight we see an example of that.”

Commissioner Pedro Villalobos said he could not support the resolution because he had not heard enough evidence that a nonprofit entity would be detrimental to the park’s operations.

“There hasn’t been anything concrete that has been expressed for why we need to be, at this stage of the game, not supporting the inclusion of the language,” Villalobos said. “All that I’ve gotten is inclinations and feelings, which for me is not sufficient at this point to support the resolution.”

The board voted 6-2 to approve the recommendation of further public engagement on the nonprofit umbrella concept. Chair Cottam Sajbel, Vice Chair Sarah Faust, and board members Patrick Moore, Lisa Hugman, Nancy Barnard, and Kimberly Taylor voted yes. Villalobos and Board Member Kathryn Flowers voted no. Board member Nina Rinaldi was absent.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here. This story has been updated to clarify Blizzard’s title, the nonprofit proposal and to add a tally of the vote at Monday’s meeting.

Posted In: Parks, District 8