They are beloved by the public, yet since the start of the COVID era largely have been forsaken by the Arlington County government’s top staff.
But could a rescue mission finally be in store for Arlington’s nature centers?
Long Branch and Gulf Branch nature centers have seen restricted hours since reopening after the pandemic. Despite pleas from advocates, county staff seem immovable when it comes to agreeing to add hours back in.
But there are indications that enough County Board members could step in and authorize funding to make that happen starting this summer.
At an April 2 work session with the Department of Parks and Recreation leadership, County Board Chairman Libby Garvey proposed a two-to-five-year pilot program to resuscitate the nature centers.
“For years, we’ve been talking. I wonder if a big push couldn’t really be helpful,” said Garvey, who has championed the nature centers for years. “Get them open, get kids into them, get programming – a real push.”
That call for a push itself received pushback from parks director Jane Rudolph, who said she would need more staff, which would be hard to find if there were no guarantee of permanent, long-term employment.
That view was backed up by County Manager Mark Schwartz, whose budget proposal effectively keeps nature-center operations in line with their reduced, post-pandemic schedule.
“As much as I think nature centers are important . . . we need the people to do it,” he said of staffing. “The most effective way . . . is to invest in ongoing funding.”
The county manager said in both the parks and libraries departments, he continues to move more positions from temporary to permanent to attract and retain staff.
“I just didn’t have as much money [available] to take the next step” in the fiscal 2025 budget, he told board members.
The final say – in theory, at least – belongs to County Board members. And over the past week, nature-center boosters have come to believe a behind-the-scenes coalition of at least three of the five board members could be coalescing to restore some or all of the restricted hours.
It seems Garvey, who has been the public face of restoring hours to nature centers in recent years, is getting some backup.
“It is past time to restore full access to our nature centers fully, both inside and out,” new-for-2024 County Board member Susan Cunningham on April 7 told the GazetteLeader.
Cunningham said it was not just important to reopen the centers, but also “strengthening after-school programming that connects our young people to nature,” particularly given mental-health concerns that have only grown since the pandemic shut down schools and much of daily life.
“Connecting youth and nature is a no-brainer,” she said.
Supporters of the nature centers seemed to be drawing some new life from the prospect of County Board intervention.
Friends of Gulf Branch Nature Center, an advocacy group, noted in an April 7 statement that the heads of two key county advisory panels (Forestry and Natural Resources Commission and Park and Recreation Commission) are seeking a return to six-day-per-week opening of both centers.
The group backed Garvey’s proposal for a multi-year push for “a vanguard outreach effort towards teens and [development of] programming efforts to incorporate the importance of nature to help the county address mental-health concerns.”
“The County Board has the opportunity to establish forward-thinking programming to make nature centers relevant to Arlington’s urban landscape,” Friends of Gulf Branch said in its statement.
Another booster, Janeth Valenzuela, wrote to County Board members urging a return to full-service nature centers.
“I know and understand that the budget prevents many things, but we must fight for things that impact learning, programs that will help children change their destiny looking toward a better future,” she wrote. “We have a responsibility so one day the children of the community will not say, ‘They didn’t do much for me or cared.’”
While it admittedly is awash in program needs, Arlington’s parks department also is flush with taxpayer cash, with more on the way. Schwartz’s budget proposal calls for $62.6 million in overall funding for fiscal 2025, up 9 percent from current spending levels – a much higher increase than many other departments are anticipating.
Nature centers require only a small fraction of that total funding. And the public, at least those who seek out Gulf Branch and Long Branch, seems to love them, which equates to a 98-percent satisfaction rate among visitors to the facilities. The same percentage say they learn something whenever they stop by or take part in programs.
Part of Rudolph’s response to criticism of limited operating hours has been to note that programming is being provided to the community in alternate ways.
“When the centers are closed, it does not mean we are not doing environmental or nature-based work,” she said.
Staff go “to every single first-grade class, we are now trying to also expand into fourth grade, and we are trying to do more pop-ups,” Rudolph said.
Garvey applauded that, but said the two facilities themselves still need to be open more frequently.
Without a reasonable amount of hours, “it’s a bit of a downward spiral,” she said.
