Committee member questions equity and oversight of $1.4–$1.5M Bailey Ridge Park work

During board member updates at the June 11 Parks and Recreation Advisory Board meeting, a committee member read a prepared statement raising concerns about the Bailey Ridge Park project and asked the board to examine oversight and equity implications.

The committee member said Bailey Ridge appears to be largely an expense to address erosion and drainage associated with nearby subdivision development, and questioned why the developer or earlier approvals did not ensure long-term repairs would not fall to taxpayers. “It looks like we wanna expand…housing development, and we're gonna build around this natural swale where if the swale had been left alone, it would have been swale,” the committee member said, arguing the park may have limited recreational use and is sited in an affluent area while other parts of Salem remain under-resourced.

Rob Romack and staff responded that the project pools multiple funding sources, noting roughly $200,000 comes from the city’s TMDL water-quality program to address water quality issues and that much of the remainder is funded by system development charges (SDCs) paid at the time of occupancy. Romack said SDCs are typically paid by developers at occupancy (about $5,000 per single-family house, he said) and are intended to expand park systems to serve new residents.

Romack acknowledged the board’s equity discussion and said the upcoming system-plan update is an opportunity to re-evaluate methodologies for distributing park investments across the city. The Bailey Ridge contractor is scheduled to start construction in mid-July, staff said. The board took no formal action at the meeting.