Burbank presents parks master plan after yearlong outreach; staff cites $45 million in CIP and roughly $154 million in recommendations

At a Jan. 14 study session, the Burbank City Council and Housing Authority heard a presentation of the city parks master plan, a yearlong effort that included mapping, demographic analysis and more than 3,000 direct community responses. Diego Ceballos, assistant director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services, and Zachary Muting of RJM Design Group presented the plan and answered council questions; the council did not take formal action at the study session.

The plan’s authors described the document as an implementation tool for parks and recreation investment and programming. “The role of the Parks and Recreation Master Plan is meant to be that tool, the implementation guide for the future of Parks and Recreation here,” said Zachary Muting, the consulting presenter. Ceballos told the council that the plan “provides us a framework of how we do make decisions on a going forward basis.”

The nut of the plan is the community input and a needs analysis. Staff said the outreach produced more than 3,000 direct responses and roughly 8,700 mapped data points, including three in-person workshops (459 responses at Workshop 1, 383 at Workshop 2 and 1,146 at Workshop 3). The consultant reported that Burbank’s 2023 population was just over 100,000 and that the city has about 6.95 acres of parkland per 1,000 residents; staff said about 92% of residents live within…