Recre8 North Carolina, Summer 2016

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Summer 2016 • RECRE8-NC 5
FROM THE PRESIDENT | by Dale Smith
In February, Barbara Tulipane, President and CEO of
NRPA, spoke at the North Carolina Park & Recreation
Directors Conference. She did an outstanding job
addressing the status of NRPA and the profession. Barbara
referred to Parks and Recreation as an “industry” for the first
time. This description helps decision makers understand the
impact of our business on the nation. During the presentation,
she showed NRPA’s 50th Anniversary video. If you haven’t seen
it, take a few minutes to view it. It is a thoughtful, well produced
piece about our national association. Here is the link:
The areas I enjoyed most about her presentation were the
strategic thought behind how our “industry” must change to lead
the future. She spoke about the three pillars that NRPA has
adopted Conservation, Health and Wellness and Social Equity
and how great it would be for those pillars to be adopted by
agencies as their own, so that we talk as one voice in telling our
story. She also spoke about park disparity and how important it
is to be prepared to maintain what we build and that if we are
not sure about the acquisition of support we need to maintain it,
we should be very thoughtful about whether or not to build it. I
completely agree. Our Parks and Recreation older infrastructure
is crumbling. If you disagree, take a look around your city and
other cities within the state of North Carolina. It is exceedingly
more difficult to maintain 30, 40 and 50 year old structures and
increasingly hard to find funding to support the maintenance
for them. So, it seems to me that today’s professionals should
give these ideas great contemplation. We should understand
the difficulty of managing a complex park system with limited
resources and work to assure future upkeep and maintenance for
anything being built today.
I love this profession and believe it to be the answer for
a number of our community needs, but to do that we have a
responsibility to be thoughtful in our approach. Focusing on
today and not contemplating the future needs and support for
such infrastructure will give future professionals a much more
complex situation than we currently have. I believe that we owe
those leaders more.
Thanks!
2016 NCRPA President
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