Agenda - 01-29-1996 - Laserfiche WebLink

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III. School/Government Coordination Introduction: Combining new schools with new parks benefits the entire community. The school/park concept is a cost-effective approach to providing public facilities for Orange County. A school campus typically defines and serves as the focal point for neighborhood use of its indoor and outdoor facilities. The school/park concept provides capital and operational cost savings while providing the optimum facilities for both school and after-school use. Because school campuses generally have facilities in place that are needed for public parks (i.e., open play fields, parking lots, water and sewer connections, electricity, and road systems to campuses) the school/park concept is a cost effective approach to providing public recreational facilities to all residents and saves the tax payers many thousands of dollars because the purchase of additional park land is not required. Opportunities exist for joint management, siting, and operation of school/park facilities. • Joint Management - The Recreation and Park Work Group reviewed the facility use agreements of the Orange County School System and the Chapel Hill/Carrboro City School System. Both systems are similar in their agreements with the Recreation and Parks Departments and provide facility use for little or no fee charged. There are nine school sites available in the County School System and twelve in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School System that are existing or under construction. All three Recreation and Parks Departments rely greatly on the use of school facilities. Although the outdoor athletic facilities are widely used; auditoriums, arts and music rooms,.media centers, and gymnasiums are under great demand as well. The number of school sites that are presently being used or have been used in the past include all ten completed school sites in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School System and eight of the nine school sites in the County School System. • Joint Site Location -Many of the existing school sites throughout Orange County were not developed for community use. Outdoor recreation areas were not considered at the time of construction. Surplus land exists at some of the school campuses around the County. State standards recommend that school districts purchase approximately 20 acres f_or elementary school and 35 acres for.middle.....: schools. An elementary school only needs 8-9 acres for'the actual=school budding and infrastructure. This leaves 11-12 acres for a community park. Building a community park on school property saves the tax payers money since purchased park land is not required. The school systems typically do not spend a lot of money on site amenities around school campuses for community recreational programs. Many of the existing schools were built at the center of