Community Engagement: A Smart Fit for Parks & Recreation Continued from page 10
We worked to help kick start the area by delivering products–experiences–to residents that they can’t get anywhere else within the sprawling community’s borders.
Parks & Recreation can bring important social groups and organizations to the same table. When a community grows by about 80,000 residents in a quarter of a century, growing pains are involved. Some of those pains simply come from the good nature of wanting to be involved or do some good. Fishers grew so fast, staff found that people wanted to get involved or had ideas for the community, but did not know how to make it happen or that another group was already doing the same thing. Fishers Parks & Recreation created multiple groups to work on solving this issue. The Fishers Civic Coalition brought social/service clubs to the table, as well as select nonprofits, for better communication and sometimes collaboration. Two business councils later coalesced with the help of the local chamber of commerce and other departments. The Nickel Plate Business Council, specifically for the newly minted downtown district, meets to get information from the city, collaborate, and encourage exploration of the area. In collaboration with the Fishers Arts Council and Parks, these local businesses have been a major part of new events–including an Arts Crawl–that breathe life into an area poised for much more growth.
While these bigger groups maintained by the Parks & Recreation Department forge ahead, the Community Engagement & Volunteer Coordinator works to field questions from the public and match needs with community stakeholders that
can make a difference–a task that is aided by cultivating these relationships in several different sectors of Fishers.
Parks & Recreation can help create new partnerships for efficiency and innovation.
By continuing the City Government Academy, we keep the doors open for interested local people to get involved, serve the community, and provide the opportunity for mutually beneficial interaction and innovation.
Working in a fast-growing community, Fishers staff follow a mantra that isn’t about maintaining the status quo or an industry standard. It’s about understanding those paradigms and working with the community to craft solutions that may deviate from them to fit and work with the citizens here. By building and working on relationships, costsaving initiatives can be crafted, helping taxpayers, staff, and the community at-large all at once. On a small scale, an example would be how a great relationship with the Rotary Club of Fishers led to the service club contracting parking services and other event needs for our seven-week long Summer Concert Series, as well as a couple of other events. By partnering, staffing costs were reduced by about 50 percent, and the Rotary had a new fundraising source, which ultimately benefits people locally and globally. On a larger scale, one of the City’s most lauded economic initiatives stemmed from a relationship built in a program now housed in the Parks & Recreation department. Fishers hosts the City Government Academy twice per year, giving residents an inside look at how their local government operates. Through this program, a relationship was built with a local entrepreneur, which later served as the genesis for Launch Fishers, a coworking space that provides 21st Century infrastructure to entrepreneurs and small businesses as they grow. This serves as a physical part of an ecosystem that encourages entrepreneurship and enables businesses to grow right in Fishers, an economic development tool that is a far cry from classic business recruitment and retention.
Parks & Recreation can play a major role in city-wide initiatives to benefit all departments. Community engagement is at its best when the lines between various city departments are flexible. Parks & Recreation plays a role in many different operations, using its network of people to benefit the entire organization when possible. A volunteer is looking for an opportunity besides helping with Parks programs? Community Development needs assistance tracking trails usage? Public relations needs to get information about a new program in front of neighborhood contacts? Parks & Recreation plays a role in all of those tasks, steeping it in the many, many functions of the city, which ultimately strengthens what the department can offer residents: a place to easily get information and navigate the organization, as well as a sounding board for concerns. Community engagement can be as complex or simple as a staff’s and elected official’s vision calls for. It’s an opportunity to invest time and energy into people that care about community. Like any initiative or policy, it can have its challenges, but when a municipality invests in relationships and its own people, the potential benefit is immeasurable.
Indiana Park & Recreation Association
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