NOTE: I wrote this story as a freelance correspondent for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The copy below is exactly what I submitted, pre-editing.

Communities around Fort Worth and all over the state began fighting the legislature last week to stop a proposal that will slow or stop local governments from building new parks, and possibly decrease the economic growth and quality of life benefits that come with them.

The Texas Recreation and Parks Account, which provides grants to local governments to build community parks, already suffered a 30-percent reduction by the 78th Texas Legislature. Now the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has proposed cutting the fund to the brink of extinction, because Gov. Rick Perry mandated that all state agencies reduce their budgets by 5 percent. Officials from Fort Worth, Richardson, Mansfield and North Richland Hills say the proposed reduction will directly affect their ability to serve the needs of their citizens.

“I believe our quality of life in Texas is at risk right now,” said Michael Massey, legislative chair of the Texas Recreation and Parks Society, a nonprofit organization made of parks and recreation officials across Texas. The group is spearheading a funding-restoration effort, which on Tuesday and Wednesday brought parks officials from 36 Texas cities and counties to talk to legislators.

“Parks meet a social need in our community; they provide physical fitness outlets and also psychological outlets. People need green space,” Massey said. Parks can also increase home values, and attract businesses and tourism to an area, thereby increasing a city’s tax revenue, he said.

The Texas Recreation and Parks Account provided $7.3 million for five park projects in Fort Worth since 1995, according to city records. Two of those parks, Arcadia Park and the Far North Community Park, “wouldn’t exist” without the grants, said Randle Harwood, acting director of the Parks and Community Service Department.

“We just would be totally underserved, in park land, in the most rapidly-growing area of the city without the Texas Recreation and Parks Account,” Harwood said. The city’s current park dedication policy depends on such state grants, he said.

In the last 10 years, the City of Mansfield received $1.5 million and the City of North Richland Hills received $2.1 million from the account. The City of Richland also received millions to help build about seven local parks.

In 1993 the legislature created the TRPA and dedicated money from a sales tax on sporting goods to fund it, but the legislature must appropriate the money every two years for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to award grants, said Tim Hogsett, who supervises the program for the department. Typical grants are $500,000 and the local government must match that amount with local money or services.

The grant recipients can use the money to buy land and pay for development for outdoor and indoor parks, and some park programs for underserved populations, such as youth at risk or the physically disabled.

The legislature usually appropriates $15.5 million annually to the account. The 78th Texas Legislature only cut that by $7.3 million per year.

To cut the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department budget by 5 percent this session, as Gov. Perry commanded, the department must trim about $16 million total, said Drew Thigten, deputy executive director for administration. To do that, the agency has proposed reducing the TRPA by $10 million over the next two years, and cutting back other expenses to make up the remainder.

The other option was to take money from state parks, but Thigten said those parks cannot operate with less money. The department doesn’t want to take money from local governments either, but has no choice, he said.

“If we’re backed into a corner that’s kind of what we have to do,” Thigten said.

Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said she thinks the parks department purposefully singled out the TRPA because parks officials knew it would draw protest from local governments.

“What this does, in my opinion, is to gather steam against the proposal from local communities so that we as a legislature will probably get pressure from the local communities not to do it,” Shapiro said. “I would suggest that if it’s necessary, maybe the legislature should figure out where that 5 percent should come from.”

To offset the loss to local governments, the parks department has shifted $5 million over two years in federal funds to the TRPA. It will also make a special request to the legislature to restore $24.7 million to the account, to make up what the last legislature took away and the reduction that the department is prosing this session.

Hogsett said the department already receives two or three times the number of applications for funding than the TRPA can handle. If the account is reduced, competition for money among local governments will be fierce.

“We’ll be given what we’re given and make the best use of the resources that we can,” Hogsett said.

There’s no doubt the additional competition will affect cities around Fort Worth.

The City of Grapevine would have soon applied for another grant to develop a park on a newly-acquired property, said Doug Evans, the city’s director of Parks and Recreation.

“If we lose the funding it will be a major impetus for people not being able to develop or buy park land,” Evans said.

Shelly Lanners, director of parks and recreation for the City of Mansfield, talked to staff members for six legislators Tuesday to attempt to show them how much of an impact the TRPA has on local governments.

“They were actually able to see it’s going to affect people in their districts,” Lanners said. “When you can physically see the list of parks built by these funds, you understand the impact.”

Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth (??), said he doesn’t support cutting the TRPA, but there are many departments facing similarly devastating budget cuts. He said if local government officials continue talking to their legislators about how important the TRPA is to their communities, it could have an effect.

“The squeaky wheel does get the oil,” Geren said. “The more the people bring it up to their members, the more they’ll work to get that funding put back in.”