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The Plan presents a long-term strat­e­gy for man­ag­ing open spaces across Alice Springs, focus­ing on improv­ing qual­i­ty, acces­si­bil­i­ty, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in how parks are devel­oped and maintained.

May­or Matt Pater­son said Coun­cil cur­rent­ly oper­ates 69 parks with more than 6 hectares of pub­lic open space per 1,000 res­i­dents — well above the nation­al stan­dard of 2 to 4 hectares — mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to main­tain all parks to a con­sis­tent­ly high standard.

“Our parks are an impor­tant part of life in Alice Springs, but we face chal­lenges in main­tain­ing so many spaces to a con­sis­tent­ly high stan­dard,” May­or Pater­son said.

“This Plan sets out a more strate­gic approach to man­ag­ing our open spaces, help­ing us invest in the parks that peo­ple use most and val­ue most.”

As part of this strat­e­gy, Coun­cil con­duct­ed a com­mu­ni­ty sur­vey with more than 300 respons­es. Feed­back showed that 66% of respon­dents would sup­port divest­ment of some open spaces to allow for a more sus­tain­able approach to parks maintenance.

Based off this feed­back, Coun­cil has iden­ti­fied eight parks for poten­tial divest­ment con­sid­er­ing usage, prox­im­i­ty to oth­er open spaces, and ongo­ing main­te­nance costs. No deci­sions on these parks have been made and Coun­cil will under­take exten­sive com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment before pro­gress­ing further.

“We’ve heard clear­ly that peo­ple want bet­ter main­tained, high­er qual­i­ty parks — and we’re lis­ten­ing,” May­or Pater­son said.

“This isn’t a done deal. We want to under­stand what mat­ters most to you when it comes to parks in your neigh­bour­hood, and we’ll be using that feed­back to guide our next steps.”

Res­i­dents can com­plete the online sur­vey now or attend upcom­ing in-per­son infor­ma­tion ses­sions. To learn more and have your say, vis­it https://​alice​springs​.nt​.gov​.au….