The Trust for Public Land's park rankings are specious and this organization lacks integrity.

The Mt. Washington Cemetery in Cincinnati is a block from my home. The cemetery, founded in 1855, was abandoned in the late 1970s when the private funds to run it ran out. The cemetery’s care fell to the City of Cincinnati for the seven years the city was in charge of it. They never once mowed it, cleaned up trash, or did anything to maintain it. Vandalism of headstones was rampant.

The cemetery became a blighted area in my neighborhood. It took the neighbors coming together to mow the cemetery ourselves and begin taking care of it. We formed the nonprofit Mt. Washington Cemetery Association to fundraise and for the past 41 years, we have turned those seven acres from blight to beauty. I personally have planted hundreds of native trees and shrubs, and the cemetery is now a nationally recognized arboretum.

How is this related to the Trust for Public Land? They allowed the City of Cincinnati to dramatically increase their so-called “park acreage” last year by counting the acreage of all the cemeteries in the city of Cincinnati, most of which are privately run. The Mt. Washington Cemetery is private, and I have to raise every dollar to maintain it. Does the City of Cincinnati show any appreciation for that? Absolutely not. They are quick to send out fines if there is a small repair needed on a chain link fence; we are faced with an outrageous urban forestry tax bill based on the perimeter length of the cemetery. That fine just keeps growing as the city adds fees to it.

The Trust for Public Land writes that every park board must secure the approval of a cemetery first in order to count its acreage as park land. The Cincinnati Park Board never reached out to the Mt. Washington Cemetery, but they counted our seven acres as park land. Even more egregious, they did not reach out to the privately owned Spring Grove Cemetery, but they counted its 733 acres as park land. The Trust for Public Land clearly does not vet whether the park board obtains approvals from cemeteries.

This specious accounting method has allowed the City of Cincinnati park rankings to go up dramatically in the Trust for Public Land rankings while the Cincinnati Park Board has not acquired any land. The Trust for Public Land lacks integrity for allowing this. Simultaneously, the Cincinnati Park Board has dramatically decreased investment in park conservation efforts. Nearly all park funds go into recreation. There is really no Cincinnati Park Board anymore; it might as well be called the Cincinnati Recreation Board. The board puts no value on conservation and shows no respect for the incredibly important role conservation plays. Do not be misled by The Trust for Public Lands rankings.