Officials with the City of Long Beach’s Parks, Recreation and Marine Department (PRM) stated Friday, May 31, that they intend to launch efforts for a strategic plan that seeks to engage the community in identifying goals and priorities for the department for the next decade.
“A strategic plan for Parks, Recreation and Marine will be an important blueprint to continue our work of expanding open space and bringing recreational opportunities to every neighborhood in Long Beach,” said Mayor Robert Garcia.
Over the coming months, PRM will invite community members to share their ideas at community conversations and engagement events across the city, through surveys, public workshops and activities at park summer events. The City also has created a PRM Strategic Plan page with a list of outreach events and a community survey.
The website can be found here: longbeach.gov/park/business-operations/about/prm-strategic-plan/.
“Our current strategic plan is more than 15 years old,” said Gerardo Mouet, director of PRM. “We want to design a new plan with community input at the core of the process.”
The Fiscal Year 2019 budget included $70,000 to update PRM’s strategic plan, which was last addressed in 2003. The new PRM strategic plan, dubbed “Parks Make Long Beach,” will cover a 10-year period, from 2020 to 2030, and is intended to incorporate the City’s existing plans with new goals, as well as serving as a guide for PRM’s operational, staffing and budgeting decisions.
PRM officials said the launch of a new plan coincides with a pledge by Garcia to ensure that everyone in Long Beach can be within a 10-minute (half-mile) walk to a park. Currently, 81 percent of Long Beach residents are within a 10-minute walk to a park. The 10-minute walk campaign is led by the Trust for Public Land, National Recreation and Park Association and Urban Land Institute.