Parks staff building asset-management system and public-facing park condition dashboards

City of Boulder Parks and Recreation staff outlined progress on an asset-management program intended to centralize data on park facilities, guide capital prioritization and give the public clearer visibility into park condition and maintenance needs.

Mark (planning/design/construction lead) described the department’s approach: field teams will use a single data-collection tool to inventory assets (play areas, courts, shelters, irrigation, etc.), data will feed a GIS-backed dashboard and the result will be a set of condition “report cards” that can be filtered by park or asset type. Staff said the city uses an asset-management system called Beehive and that Esri GIS will be used to build dashboards and maps.

Staff showed early prototypes of a condition dashboard that maps assets and aggregates condition scores and replacement-cost estimates. They also described work on a “park quality” or “park q” score that would combine asset condition with metrics for equity, placemaking and community use so the department can compare where the community values a park most against where deferred maintenance is greatest.

Mark said the program is intended to help the department move beyond qualitative prioritization and toward a quantitative, data-informed approach to capital planning. He and colleagues emphasized the program’s potential to make prioritization decisions — and trade-offs between repair, replacement and new projects — more transparent to the public.

Staff noted one early finding: prefabricated play-area costs have risen substantially and replacing all city play areas (staff estimated total potential replacement need) would be a multi-million-dollar item that requires new procurement and potential design-build approaches to manage costs.

The board responded positively to early dashboards and asked staff about public-facing versions; staff said they expect to develop both internal dashboards for operations and public-facing displays that help residents understand priorities, condition and planned projects.