Parks #3: National Park Service Town Hall meeting in DC on Saturday

I am taking the liberty of reprinting this from Washcycle:

National Park Service Town Hall meeting in DC

This is a great development (press release from Delegate Norton). I hope that it is more than a dog and pony show.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will host the first-ever D.C. town hall meeting with the National Park Service (NPS), which owns and operates almost all D.C. parks, this Saturday, October 22, from 1:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. at One Judiciary Square, 441 4^th Street NW. Norton, who receives many questions about our NPS neighborhood parks and the National Mall, wants to give D.C. residents the opportunity to speak directly with NPS officials, who will also give brief presentations. The town hall meeting will be devoted to promoting a discussion on how our parks can better serve D.C. residents.

Besides allowing CaBi stations on the Mall, there are many other issues important to cyclists that involved NPS, including the Rock Creek Park trail, the Mount Vernon Trail at-grade crossings, the Custis/Lynn intersection, ban of cycling on the Parkways, CaBi at other NPS properties, etc.
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Of course, I am just as much if not more interested in the broader park management, access, and integration issues as it relates to the relationship between the National Park Service and the DC city agenda for parks, open space, and recreation facilities.

I just came across a mention of an effort in New York City being coordinated by Happold Consulting that could be a model for the kind of intergovernmental parks planning effort we need to have in DC:

an intergovernmental effort between New York City and the National Park Service to develop a vision and collective management agreement for almost 10,000 acres of parkland located in and around Jamaica Bay.

And I have discussed similar issues in this blog entry, "This is National Park Week, next year we need to hold a National Urban Park Week."