Parks make perfect perks

You can tell a lot about a community by its parks.

Take Coeur d'Alene for example. Or Spirit Lake.

Coeur d'Alene is blessed with an abundance of them. City Park by Lake Coeur d'Alene is as fine a park as any in small-town America. McEuen will join that illustrious designation someday and, perhaps, even pass it. Throughout the community, parks are plentiful, pristine and prudently maintained.

By comparison, Spirit Lake is a much smaller town and shouldn't be expected to boast the array of parks its cousin Coeur d'Alene does, but the community would dearly love to have more and better parks than it's got. And who wouldn't?

Parks spark economic development. They increase property values and citizens' morale. They're cornerstones of healthy, happy communities. They are as aesthetically pleasing and as personally invigorating or perfectly relaxing as a visitor chooses to make them. In our view, because the maintenance costs are relatively low and the benefits so high, it's hard to find a better investment than a park.

That's why we're strongly endorsing efforts by the nonprofit Panhandle Parks Foundation to grow well beyond its Coeur d'Alene borders and help bring beautiful parks to more communities throughout North Idaho. To grow, they need your help.

First, the foundation wants four additional members for its volunteer board. It now has eight, and a broader range of experience and perspectives would strengthen the board even more.

Further, the foundation needs financial support. That can take the form of tax-deductible cash contributions, land donations and trusts. Cash is of course most fluid, but land donations are exceedingly valuable because the property can be sold or exchanged, as needed.

As Coeur d'Alene City Councilman Dan Gookin points out, the drawback of a foundation managing money and property is that it is not required to abide by open meeting laws and public records requests. He pledges vigilance in those areas, as does this newspaper. Parks Foundation officials have been exceedingly open and we expect that to continue.

Gookin and others also note that foundations have several advantages with parks that cities don't. For instance, nonprofits are more attractive to many donors because of the tax benefits. Also, foundations can often leverage additional dollars in grants, sometimes up to 50 percent more than the original amount. In other words, a $1 million gift can, through the Panhandle Parks Foundation, become a $1.5 million gift.

Few legacies present a greater honor to benefactors than having a park named after them. But even if anonymity is the name of your game, please call Panhandle Parks Foundation, 208-651-6271, to see how you can help.