Visit Emily Battle's blog: City Beat

View the Stafford County community page

Does Pratt gift limit park deal?

Park Authority raises concerns about proposal for Fredericksburg and Stafford to take over maintenance of riverside parks.

Date published: 1/18/2007

By EMILY BATTLE

The Fredericksburg-Stafford Park Authority last night debated how best to take care of the collection of riverside parks that started with a land gift from John Lee Pratt 44 years ago.

The Authority is an independent board that owns St. Clair Brooks Memorial Park, John Lee Pratt Memorial Park and Falmouth Waterfront Park in Stafford County, and Old Mill Park in Fredericksburg.

Fredericksburg and Stafford County leaders have proposed that their parks and recreation departments can maintain those lands more efficiently than the Authority can.

Last night, Fredericksburg City Manager Phillip Rodenberg and Stafford County Administrator Steve Crosby proposed that the localities do just that.

They would stop making their annual contribution to the Authority, and instead put that money into their own parks departments.

Fredericksburg committed $200,611 to the Park Authority this year. Stafford gave $286,588.

The idea addresses the question of whether the independent Authority is a redundant body that duplicates services taxpayers are already funding on either side of the river.

City and county residents would still be able to use all the parks under the same terms.

The Authority board agreed to work with the localities to fine-tune the details of their proposal, but board members have a lot of questions and concerns.

They'll have to work quickly to address those, because the localities will be deciding whether to give any money to the Authority as they put their budgets together for next year. That process begins in less than two months.

Rodenberg and Crosby said the Authority board would continue as a policymaking and fundraising entity, but some board members wonder what purpose it would serve if it was no longer responsible for the maintenance of the parks.

As they talked, they voiced different opinions of the terms of the Pratt family's initial land gift. Board member Eric Olsen worried that if the Park Authority ceased to exist, it might trigger a provision in the original gift that calls for the land to revert to Mary Washington Hospital.

The deed actually states that the land must be used "only for park purposes," and that it not be sold to another entity "for any other purpose."

Terms of the gift The 1962 deed that gave a gift of 75 acres to the Fredericksburg-Stafford Park Authority for St. Clair Brooks Park states that the land "Shall be used only for park purposes; and no portion of said land shall be sold, conveyed or leased to any person, firm or corporation for any other purpose." If that restrictive covenant is broken, the deed states, "the land hereby conveyed shall pass to and vest in the Mary Washington Hospital Association, Incorporated, Fredericksburg, Virginia, in fee simple forever without reservations or restrictive covenant." The Park Authority board will meet next Wednesday at 7 p.m. to further discuss the proposal for the county and city to take over maintenance of the parks.

Follow us on

Read more stories about Fredericksburg
Date published: 1/18/2007