Tuscaloosa Mayor Recommends City Take Over Six Parks Currently Run by PARA

Mayor Walt Maddox is recommending the city take ownership of six local parks currently managed by the Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority to close the gap between the parks the city already maintains and the ones it doesn't.

The immediate financial impact is small. Maddox said the city will stop sending PARA a little more than $32,000 a year and will redirect that money into maintaining the parks itself using municipal Construction, Facilities and Grounds staff.

The parks are Cardinal Park near the Tuscaloosa National Airport, West Tuscaloosa's Freeman Park as well as McKinney Park, Monnish Park by Central High School, and the Harmon and Rosedale Parks off Greensboro Avenue.

"Take our Riverwalk and compare it to those parks. Take Government Plaza and compare it to those parks. Take Annette Shelby Park," Maddox said during a press conference about his budget proposals Wednesday. "In other words, take the parks that the city maintains and compare them to those parks, and you will see a stark difference. Every citizen in our community deserves a high-quality park system."

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He was careful to say the difference is not PARA's fault, but a function of how the authority is built.

(Stephen Dethrage | Tuscaloosa Thread)

"PARA, by no fault of their own, is structurally unable to provide the level of services that we can for those parks," Maddox said. "PARA does a great job in terms of managing the recreation side - youth sports and other things - but in terms of what it takes to maintain a park system [...] the city already has landscaping crews, the city already has fleet maintenance, the city already has IT. We have built-in infrastructure that gives us the flexibility to go take care of these parks, whereas PARA doesn't have that flexibility because of the way they're structured."

Maddox explained PARA was created in 1968 by the city, Tuscaloosa County and Northport, when he said 90 percent of the county's population lived within 10 minutes of downtown. Fast forward 60 years, and their service area now runs from Samantha to Duncanville and from Lake View into west Tuscaloosa County.

"Their resource allocation is not sufficient to do that - not from us! - but it's just not sufficient," he said. "They're in an impossible situation."

Maddox said the conversations about the handoff went well, because it takes work off the authority's plate.

"It actually relieves them of some responsibilities and frees up resources, which allows them to then focus on the things they want to be good at, youth sports and the activity centers and things like that," he said.

Residents should not expect a dramatic change right away. Maddox said visible improvements will come over two to five years.

"With the city taking over these parks, what you will see is not only grass being cut, but playground equipment being modernized and updated regularly, trash being picked up and not being left out there long periods of time, improved lighting and improved camera systems for security," he said.

He cited Snow Hinton Park, Kaulton Park and Burrell Odom Park, all previously absorbed by the city, as the model.

"We've seen not only improved numbers of people out there taking part in them, but improved public safety and people feeling safe to be in parks," Maddox said. "Lighting, camera technology, cleanliness, those things help, and we have the infrastructure to be able to do that more effectively."

The recommendation is part of Maddox's $356 million budget proposal, which now goes before the Tuscaloosa City Council for a vote they aim to hold before the Fiscal Year begins on October 1st, 2026.

This is the first of multiple stories about the mayor's budget proposal. For more exclusive coverage of city government in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.