Please keep Springfield Green

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My hope is that each of the individuals who want to be our mayor will commit today to keep this successful effort intact for 2011.

We call on you, candidates for mayor, to tell the Springfield Green committee to move forward with planning and ordering for the coming season. Once the dust settles in your administration we can sit down and talk about how best to staff and manage the program in future years. Mostly now we just want to hear that you don’t intend to walk away from the momentum gained over the last seven years.

Springfield Green isn’t everything, and there are likely refinements that could make it even more successful. It could evolve into a nonprofit organization with an executive director who serves as a liaison to the city on grants and such. Of course a truly progressive mayor might boost its funding and grow its influence beyond its current status. Everything can be on the table in 2012. But as for this year: there are beds to be weeded and plants to be ordered. Spring waits for no one, including the new mayor.

Sharon Whalen is publisher of Illinois Times, a Springfield Green committee member and organizer of the Springfield in Bloom initiative.