Louisville Mayor Greenberg announces plan for park ranger program

Louisville plans to introduce rangers to its parks, starting with the hire of a senior ranger to oversee the program, Mayor Craig Greenberg announced at a press conference Tuesday.

Park rangers will be sworn public safety officers and will enforce all local and state laws, like requiring people to abide by park hours and putting a stop to illegal dumping and vandalism.

Rangers will be part of the city Parks and Recreation staff but will work closely with Louisville Metro Police, other city departments and state officials as needed.

"We heard from our community that the top two reasons some people said, if they hesitated to use our parks, were because of concerns they had about safety and security," Greenberg said, referencing the Parks for All report.

Louisville was one of 10 cities across the globe selected for the Bloomberg Harvard Cross-Boundary Collaboration Program in 2023, and the Greenberg administration focused on improving the city's park safety through agency partnerships. They created a pilot program in Iroquois Park, which found a 60% decrease in the "misuse" of the park when LMPD officers diligently enforced park hours.

Louisville Metro Council approved $300,000 for the ranger program in the last city budget. It will be spent on hiring a senior park ranger to shape the program and buying a park ranger vehicle.

"The vehicle is very, very pricey," said Parks and Recreation executive administrator Bridget Frailley. "It's a fully equipped police vehicle. That vehicle is a 2025 Explorer with the police interceptor package. So, everything — all the equipment that LMPD uses — will be the same thing. They'll have body cameras."

Frailley hopes there will be leftover money in the budget to hire one part-time staffer "to help support this initial senior park ranger."

The city hopes to expand the ranger program next year, Greenberg said.

Louisville has more than 120 parks, and cities with such large park systems typically have 25-35 rangers with a "very large" budget, Frailley said. It is unclear what funding will look like for the program in the next city budget, which will likely be passed in the summer of 2025.

"We're very excited about the funding," Frailley said. "I just ask the public be patient, that they understand that we have a limited budget and a very vast park system, and that we need them to help support the parks just as much as the park ranger."

The parks department has also created a new system to track data on vandalism, illegal dumping and other prohibited activities to determine where to strategically invest its limited resources and track the impact of rangers.

The application for the senior park ranger is open on the parks department website and will be posted for three weeks, according to a statement from the mayor's office.

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Reach reporter Eleanor McCrary at [email protected] or at @ellie_mccrary on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This story was updated to add a video.