Evening star., 1932-05-10

Further progress in purchasing land
! for park and playground purposes would
I likewise be Stif1ed The Federal Gov
ernment needs to purchase these key
| properties now, while they are COM
paratively reasonable in price and be-
fore improvement shoots purchase
! prices skyward
Proper development of the nearby
| Maryland valleys will likewise be halted
unless funds stricken out by House ac-
ton are restored by the Senate. De-
velopment of Rock Greek and Sligo
Valleys specifically, will be indefinitely
postponed under the Collins amend
ment and further expansion in those
Col Grant pointed out recently that
the Collins amendment affects a con-
siderable number of properties now un-
der negotiation. He indicated that an
implied agreement with the owner ex-
lists, the National Capital Park and
Planning Commission having, with the
assurance of appropriations already
made, offered a definite amount or in
dicated it was willing to pay a certain
price.
Stoppage of the funds brings about
condition where even the rounding
out of projects already partly pur-
chased is not possible. Col. Grant
made it clear that considerable part
Of the Governments investment in
land will not be profitably usable if
the Collins amendment is written into
law, for they will be left hanging in
midair, so to speak.
Col. Grant denied that his commits
sion was keeping up the prices of land
In the District, through paying exor-
bitant prices and said that the Collins
amendment was apparently passed by
the House under a misapprehersion.
The National Capital Park and Plan
ming Commission has nothing to do
with the purchase of land for the
Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, as
indicated by Representative Collins nor
with the purchase of land for the
widening of Conduit road Likewise,
he said, the commission was without
plans for the erection of memorial
archways at the entrances to the Dis
trict, as charged.
The general expenses for Washing
tons parks were cut 1924 per cent.
There Is an allowance of $1S2, 900 for
development of the Rock Greek and
Potomac Parkway, but officials foresee
part OF the butter. represented by these
funds, being used to spread thinly on
As the proposed new P Street Bridge
item has been eliminated from the
District appropriation bill by the House,
this will hamper the development of the
Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway
southwark from P street to Pennsyl-
vania avenue along Rock Creek. Col
Grant and his associates have been
looking forward to a new bridge
spanning Rock Greek Valley at street,
as the present structure is deemed too
low to permit construction of an ade-
quate park highway beneath it.
The park planners view as q
calamity this relegating to the scrap
heap of the plans of years. the halting
OF park development, and believe that
washington will surely suffer.
History of Park Legislation.
Decision by the House not only to
halt appropriations but to withhold the
further expenditure of money already
appropriated under terms of the Capper-
Cramton legislation Is peculiarly ironic
when considered in relation to the
history of this legislation.
The legislation was in the beginning
conceived along broadly national lines,
the cost at one time being based on the
ngurative contribution of one penny a
year by every man, woman and child
In the United States as indicative of the
national interest in developing a ma
t1onal park system in connection with
the American Capital and its environs.
But before it had been enacted the
bill was drastically changed and its
financing provisions radically altered.
SO that, as far as expenditures within
the District of Columbia were con-
cerned, 1t came to represent merely an
additional sum to be taken from purely
local revenues. The only contribution
from the people of the United States
toward the money to be appropriated
under the Capper-Cramton bill would
be- the proportionate share of the
District bill represented by the lump
sum.
The United States was to advance
SIG 000, 900, but the money was to be
paid back at the rate of q million a
year from District revenues. The fact
that there would be no interest on this
loan was represented as compensatory
in part, for the lack of more adequate
participation by the United States in
the actual production of the revenue.
Big Loss Seen Here.
As the District bill now stands, be-
fore its consideration by the Senate,
the United States has not only reduced
its proportionate part of the participa-
ton In the park funds by reducing its
lump sum, but 1t withholds further ap-
preparations from the Treasury advance,
to which it already has been commit
ted, and continues to demand that the
Will Rogers |
Says: |