Funding City Parks
Over at UrbanCincy, Mr Simes has a post about the proposed upgrades for Washington Park. One of the issues is - only about half the funding is in place.
The park is managed by the city park board & financing with that entity is weird. Still money's tight all around these days.
Cincinnati has some lovely parks & is also home to some really nice cemeteries. One thing I think makes a city great is great architecture, art and statuary. On that last one, statuary, Cincinnati is pretty weak. OTOH, cemeteries like Spring Grove are treasure troves of statuary.
So, in an effort to get more statuary in the city & help pay for the parks, how about selling people graves in the public parks? Washington Park is a no brainer because it actually used to be a cemetery. Monuments could be as simple as a bench or giant angels blowing horns & stuff. Park planners could set up a kind of "form based" system with bold monuments in some places & monument benches, tables, drinking fountains, arches & stuff in appropriate places.
The sites would be more expensive than regular cemetery lots because the whole idea is to raise long term maintenance money & the deceased would get more face time with the living being in a park instead of being tucked away in a cemetery.
It's kinda like selling personalized pavers except bigger & more permanent. (My mom bought a paver for a museum & she is one of only a few who still has her name on the brick. Everybody else's wore off, but they put a trash can on my mom's so it is still in great shape!)
PS Spring Grove now has summer hours. Open late til 8 on Mondays & Thursdays.