As the county is proposing to cut more than $1.5 million from the Milwaukee County Park System for 2007, friends of Bradford Beach and Lake Park are stepping up to aid with needed improvements.

One such project is the creation of a water garden at Bradford Beach that designer Jim Donnolly said is an “ecologically conscious design” that will be located on grass bank on the beach’s south side. The water will emerge from an 80-foot deep aquifer and travel into channels on the surface where it will collect in something similar to a big puddle. From there it will submerge back into the ground and continue its water cycle.

“It is a design that is to stimulate through the senses and our relationship to it,” Donnolly said.

The project is set to go before the Lakefront Development Advisory Committee (LDAC) in the next couple weeks and then to the county board. If approved, organizers would be able to start raising the $500,000 to complete the project.

“We wanted to do something to bring attention back to the beach,” said Deborah Lukovich, the Friends of Bradford Beach committee chair.

In addition to the water gardens, Downtown Rotary members and other concerned citizens went down to the beach Saturday, Oct.14, to wash and clean out the old beach house along Lincoln Memorial Drive. They plan to make it ready for use by spring or summer 2007.

“It’s like finding the best apartment in town, but you have to clean it top to bottom before you bring your friends there,” Donnolly said.

Walker’s proposed budget also planned to bring seasonal lifeguards back to Bradford and McKinley Beach, which have been going without them for four years. Donnolly said he hopes if the plan goes through, the lifeguards will help communicate the needs of the park as well as look out for crime.

But according to the proposed budget, “The proposed program will rely on donations from corporate entities, individual citizens, and other sponsors to offset costs associated with staffing and maintaining these beaches.”

The need for private funding comes from the dwindling money the Milwaukee County Park System is receiving from the county.

“Back 20 years ago 40 percent tax levy went towards the park system,” said Parks Director Sue Black. “Currently we are at seven percent.” She said she fears that amount could be cut in half if Walker’s budget goes through.

Jerry Broderick, District Three county supervisor and member of the Parks, Energy and Audit Committee, is also very concerned about the parks’ future.

“Every year we put it off, it gets more expensive,” Broderick said. “Without a new source of revenue our parks are in for dire consequences.”

The more than 15,000 acre Milwaukee County Park System has more than $150 million in backlogged work that needs to be done, said Broderick, citing a recent study. But he estimates that the parks need at least $250 million to be fully restored including the preservation of the old bridges in Lake Park.

Broderick proposed a half percent sales tax to be addressed in a Nov. 7 referendum that would benefit the park system and other recreational activities, but the county board voted it down 12 to seven. Thirteen votes were needed for it to pass.

As an alternative proposed plan, the Milwaukee County Park System and other friends of the park groups support an independent park district where administrators would be elected to the park commission and entitled to make decisions about the parks. County Executive Scott Walker supports this plan.

“The ultimate vision of hope for the parks is the creation of a new Park District,” Walker said in his Sept. 28 budget address. “Nearly all of the award-winning parks systems from across the country come from park districts and it is time to build one here in Milwaukee County.”

Regardless of how the park system gets funded, both sides agree that something needs to be done to preserve the parks’ assets.

“At one point the park system was the envy of the country,” Black said. “I don’t think we are too far back to be that again.”

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