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By Will Mbah
Candidate for Somerville City Councilor at Large

During the summer I was able to bring the kids to several of the city’s parks, both to take part in organized programs and just to hang out with dad and mom under the trees. It got me thinking about the jobs that our talented parks managers and urban foresters must do every day to keep the network of open spaces and tree-lined streets in good shape for us all.

What a great job they do!

How we plan for open space expansion and parks improvement in the city

The basic strategies for our park system and greens paces have been defined in the Open Space and Recreation Plan (2016-2023) and the Urban Forest Management Plan of 2021. These are complex plans, when compared to traditional models of parks and open space planning in US cities. Contrary to expectations, it appears to be more difficult to expand and maintain our open spaces in a small geographic city like Somerville (4.1 square miles) than in bigger places. If you are Boston, for example, with 38 square miles and a long and varied coastline, there are many more opportunities to find land and fit interesting green spaces into neighborhoods and new project designs. In Somerville, we need to watch, wait and jump quickly whenever some small or larger bit of land or a new program opportunity becomes available. We often need to scramble quickly to structure a funding package and a design team to make it all work.

Thus, our plans have to encompass a variety of concepts and models along with flexible schedules and the skills and tools for quick response. In general, there are three approaches that the different programs and activities follow:

• Certain programs involve steady, incremental work. For example, the Urban Forestry division follows a season-by-season schedule of activities, inventorying trees in the parks and on sidewalks, assessing their health, pruning and removing any that are diseased, and planting new trees to diversify species and expand the tree canopy. Each year they have added about 150 new trees, combined in the spring and fall plantings.
• Other programs “piggyback” the green space improvements on other infrastructure pro-jects. In particular this has involved final stages of sidewalk improvements as each stretch of the new storm drains and sewer lines have been installed. Urban forestry finishes the ground level with drainage swales, native plants and trees to create a ribbon of trees and shrubs along new bike lanes and pedestrian walkways.
• The third approach to green space expansion has been to work with private developers to install wider sidewalks and small parks and plazas as public/private spaces. These are coming on line in Union Square, Assembly Square, Boynton Yards and Brickbottom as new lab buildings and larger scale residential projects are completed.

Has this strategy of incremental, steady addition of green spaces made progress this summer?

Overall, around the city, the Urban Forestry Division has planted 185 new trees during the spring 2023 planting, with concentrations in the areas where the sewer and drainage separation work has been finishing. This was in addition to over 350 trees planted in spring and fall of 2022. They are now getting ready to continue with a mobilization of High School volunteers who will be tree planters for this fall.

Heavier duty park improvement work is also underway. The Healey School Playground reconstruction finished in May and the linear Somerville Junction Park (running along the Community Path between Gilman and Teele Squares) has been fenced in August for construction to start. Junction Park will get about 70 new trees and other shrubs and lawns, replacing asphalt and gravel, running alongside the Community PATH.

Various stretches of the sidewalk improvements, over finished sewer and drainage separation lines have also been completed during the summer. In particular, the bike lane and planting areas on Somerville Avenue from Union Square to Medford Street now create a ribbon park of trees and native shrubs and grasses.

Another project of ribbon urban forest, located alongside the Community PATH, has been installed by the developers of the new lab building on Chestnut/Joy Street in Brickbottom. This building will soon have a “front yard” stretch of tree-lined widened sidewalk, bike path and storm water retaining planted areas.

Keeping up the momentum and sustaining a flow of funds for green space

Looking toward the future, the city’s Capital Improvement Plan encompasses an ambitious program both of incremental work – more sidewalk green spaces as the sewer projects move along – and of larger park and playground projects. First in the queue of priority projects are the Art Farm, the Brown and Winter Hill schoolyards. Their timing is uncertain, however, because all three projects are dependent upon the prior completion of other infrastructure work and possible limitations of future funding.

For example, Art Farm has been under discussion for almost ten years but, because it will be built as the surface-level of a complex underground drainage and pumping station, its final design is not yet be worked out. This leaves incomplete the calculations of cost and decisions on financing. It has always been assumed that the Art Farm will be paid for by a combination of city bonded funds, CPA and other state/federal grants, and developer contributions. In order to be prepared, the city’s Finance Department has already put certain funds into stabilization accounts and has reserved but some of the CPA grant/budget lines. But in the early years of planning, before COVID, the cost estimate for Art Farm was reported as $4 million. By 2023, the estimate has been given as $10 million, $11 million and $20 million in different reports.

The underground pumping station work has begun with a projected timeline of 2 years and a budget estimate of $89 million. Presumably, Art Farm designs will be ready in 2025 or 2026, and a sufficient funding package will by then be in place. This is not a longtime frame for complex planning and related community reviews, and in the interim some large projects of school construction and municipal building repair and renewal may have a priority claim on the capital budgets.

Thus, the Art Farm illustrates the problem our open space planners face – how to stay as ready as possible with plans, designs and reserve funds, so that at the moment it becomes feasible to jump forward with a park and green space project, all the pieces can fit together quickly.

It is up to us as citizens to keep abreast of their work and to support and encourage them. Meanwhile, we should all take a little time to visit one of the parks and enjoy our green spaces in the autumn.

If you want to learn more or support my campaign, please visit my website at willmbah.com.