2024-2030 System and Strategic Plan
Parks are powerful tools for urban communities and local economies. Every six years Parks Tacoma establishes program priorities for future improvements.
“City in a Park” envisions every Tacoma resident with access to vital green infrastructure and opportunities for recreational experiences and can clearly see how their local government is investing in their neighborhoods with their health, vitality and quality of life in mind.
The 2024-2030 System and Strategic Plan outlines how we will achieve our mission, goals and objectives. It guides decisions on facilities, programs and services, including a capital improvement program.
View the full plan here:
2024-2030 System & Strategic PlanOur three mission program areas are:
- Active Lifestyles and Community Wellness
- Nature and Environment
- Arts, Culture and Heritage
The strategic actions outlined here should be viewed as a framework, which we will add to or modify during the six-year period, as needed. They are based on key insights gleaned through community engagement.
Parks Tacoma’s strategic plan will be integrated with the City of Tacoma’s Comprehensive Plan.
Four Strategic Directions
- People
- Programs
- Places
- Pathways
People: Cultural Alignment
- Bolster our youth in their social-emotional development and sense of belonging and engagement with the place they live; incorporate their voices and experiences in decision-making processes.
- Continue to build a workforce and an organizational culture that reflects and makes decisions that represent the diversity of the community it serves.
- Continue robust community engagement during decision-making processes.
- Continually strive for a balanced capital improvement plan that invests in infrastructure that honors community diversity and cultivates inclusivity.
- Continue to evolve our partnerships with other organizations and agencies to create increasingly integrated and seamless service delivery.
Key Insights:
- Serving a diverse community means residents must feel welcome; they must see themselves in park, recreation and zoological sites and in the organization that creates and stewards these spaces.
- Public engagement is paramount in aligning capital expenditures with the needs if the greater community, and youth is a critical voice to be included in the process.
- More community gathering spaces are needed to facilitate social connectedness, combat isolation/loneliness, and to provide safe spaces for our youth, older adults and other marginalized communities.
Programs: Defining Our Core Services and Strategic Collaborations
- Continue to develop cost recovery as one of the foundational components for ensuring sustainable service provision.
- Build Parks Tacoma’s skill in facilitative programming as a quality and cost-effective approach for providing for the vast variety of activities desired by the community.
- Continue to use and enhance Parks Tacoma’s business plan approach by incorporating new data analytics focusing on service provision allocation, service delivery methods and models, community diversity, equity and fiscal responsibility.
- Provide a seamless ecosystem for youth sports that creates space for and attracts all youth in Tacoma to participate in daily, engaging physical activity.
Key Insights:
- There are services “core” to Parks Tacoma, but not all Parks Tacoma services are “core.”
- To provide the affordable breadth of recreation activities expected by the community, Parks Tacoma’s service portfolio must incorporate a notable portion of facilitative programming.
- Public spaces are essential for quality of life and for the greater good, including for educational success, violence reduction and community well-being.
Places: Parks and Recreation Spaces as “Third Space” of Choice
- Engage our community’s interest in shaping their neighborhoods and helping to take care of our communal spaces.
- Consider more flexibility in the uses allowed in public spaces and design spaces to better integrate multiple uses.
- Help youth more deeply connect with the place they live, especially via interactions with the spaces designed for public gathering and connection.
- Engage with the community to advance efforts that support them to develop a sense of connection with their public spaces.
- Invest in distribution of recreation spaces and programs in a manner that facilitates equitable participation in our community’s parks and recreation system.
- Encourage spending time outdoors in public spaces designed to support physical, mental, social and emotional health.
Key Insights:
- Geographic proximity is essential for walkability to parks and recreation spaces, but alone does not ensure accessibility to these spaces.
- A population-based level of service standard alone does not adequately represent the best and most effective way to address community needs.
- There is a lack of local “ownership” of local parks.
- Safe routes to parks and creation spaces are equally important as the types of experiences available at the destination.
Pathways: Mobilization for Connecting with and Enlivening Our Natural World
- Invest in streets and other public routes not only as conduits between destinations, but as intentional spaces for connection with fellow community members and the environment.
- Advocate for and invest in trees, green infrastructure and natural spaces with an urgency to rival the pace and depth of climate change and urbanization impacts.
- Inspire and engage community to care about and steward the natural environment.
- Prioritize public space as a lifeblood that can multiply and enrich community connections and identity.
- Coordinate and integrate plans to grow a greener and more resilient nature-infused community.
Key Insights:
- Accessible natural environment and outdoor recreation space is not equitably distributed across the community.
- Streets and rights-of-way are the most abundant and accessible public space that exist in our community; the transportation network can and should provide for more than the movement of people and goods.
- Enhancing wildlife and biodiversity, tree canopies and climate resiliency are critical calls to action, especially to preserve and continue the experiences that characterize Tacoma’s park system.
