Sunday, September 6, 2026

The POMA Model: Is Zilker Park Next?

 By Diana Prechter, Austin parks advocate

This is the third piece in a series on how Austin is handing the operation of its public parks to private nonprofits. The first two looked at The Trail Conservancy and Town Lake Metropolitan Park. This one looks ahead — to the next wave of these deals, and to the park that may be the biggest prize of all: Zilker.

The City has already named who's next

On October 16, 2024, PARD Director Angela Means put it in writing. In a memo to the Parks Board directing an audit of the City's park-nonprofit agreements, she wrote: "In collaboration with the City's Law Department, PARD continues to draft and negotiate partnership agreements. Agreements in development include the Zilker Botanical Garden Conservancy, Fruitful Commons, and the Austin Parks Foundation." So the City is, by its own account, drafting a POMA-style agreement with the Austin Parks Foundation (APF).

Why APF is a different kind of park nonprofit

Most park conservancies are donor-funded. The Central Park Conservancy — the nation's largest — draws about 64% of its revenue from contributions and only about 17% from earned or event income (fiscal year ending June 2025), and its contributions have run between 57% and 81% every year since 2021. APF's revenue mix is nearly the reverse. In 2024, roughly 76% of APF's revenue — about $9.3 million of $12.3 million — came from a single commercial event, the Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival, with only about 21% from donations. (Both figures come straight from the organizations' IRS 990s.) APF is, in practice, a festival-revenue operation that also does park philanthropy — the opposite of the donation-funded model the public usually pictures when it hears "parks foundation."

That matters because the POMA model rewards exactly this. The template contractually pushes the partner to maximize commercial revenue from public parkland. A nonprofit whose budget already runs on a giant commercial festival is uniquely built to do that — and uniquely dependent on being allowed to.

The Zilker connection

Zilker is a 351-acre metropolitan park — large, iconic, and long overdue for a park-wide plan. The City tried to make one: the Zilker Park Vision Plan. It was halted in August 2023 (the interim City Manager suspended it after Mayor Watson and several Council members opposed it) and never came to a vote. A major public objection at the time was the fear that a nonprofit/conservancy model would prioritize commercial interests and mega-donors over the broader community and the rest of the park system.

Meanwhile, APF already dominates the commercial life of Zilker Park. ACL — the festival that funds three-quarters of APF's budget — is held in Zilker, now under a 15-year City contract. APF also operates the Zilker Eagle train. And there is a direct organizational link between APF and the community nonprofit forming around Zilker's future: Colin Wallis, the CEO of the Austin Parks Foundation, sits on the board of Zilker 351, the nonprofit created to shape the park's next chapter.

The reasonable inference — and the honest caveat

Put those pieces together — a planned APF partnership agreement, APF's existing commercial hold on Zilker (it runs both ACL and the Zilker Eagle train there), APF's own CEO on the Zilker 351 board, and a 351-acre park that still has no adopted plan — and it is a reasonable concern that APF's anticipated POMA could designate Zilker as the acreage it operates, maintains, and commercializes. 

There's a fiscal motive, too: Zilker's maintenance cost the Parks Department about $2.6 million in FY25, and a POMA would move that expense off its books. To be clear, this is an inference, not a signed contract — Zilker 351 says it "has not yet established a partnership agreement" and that the Parks Department "will continue to manage, operate, and oversee Zilker Park," and no POMA assigning Zilker to APF has been made public. But every one of these pieces is on the public record, and residents deserve a clear answer about whether Zilker is headed toward such a contract before any deal is finalized.

Why it should concern the public

The worry is the same one that stopped the Zilker Park Vision Plan in 2023, now arriving through a different door. If Austin hands O&M and commercial rights over its most-used park to a nonprofit that already earns most of its money by commercializing that same park, the incentives all point one way: more revenue-generating activity on public land, decisions about the park's future made by a private board rather than an accountable public body, and festival and concession dollars flowing to a nonprofit's priorities instead of the City's General Fund and the park system as a whole. 

In Chicago, festival revenue from Lollapalooza is paid to the elected Chicago Park District; in Minneapolis, an elected Park Board runs operations while its foundation only fundraises. Austin is on a path to route that money -- and that authority -- through a private nonprofit instead. The public should get to weigh that trade-off — in the open, and before the contract is signed.

Sources

All figures come from the City's own records and the organizations' public filings:

Diana Prechter is an Austin parks advocate who researches City of Austin park-partnership agreements through public records.

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A Case Study: The Trail Conservancy: A $1 Million Park, a $5 Million Nonprofit (The Trade-Off)

 By Diana Prechter, Austin parks advocate

In a companion piece I described how Austin hands primary responsibility for its public parks to private nonprofits while keeping the land publicly owned — the model the City calls a "Level-A Partnership." Here I want to put real dollars on that trade-off, using the City's own records, for the biggest example of all: The Trail Conservancy (TTC) and the 295-acre Town Lake Metropolitan Park.

What it costs the City to maintain the whole park

In 2022, APR's own partnership program manager, Christine Chute-Canul, put the Parks Department's annual cost of maintaining the entire park in writing to then-Director Kimberly McNeeley. Her figure: roughly $975,349 a year — covering, in her words, "everything except reconditioning of the main trail." Including trail reconditioning, the all-in figure was about $1,121,664. So by the City's own reckoning, the entire park could be operated and maintained for on the order of $1 million a year. That $975,349 is a 2022 figure for maintaining the whole park; under the POMA, TTC is set to become the primary maintenance party for most of it by Phase 3, around 2032.

What the nonprofit takes in

The Trail Conservancy is not a small operation. Its most recent audited financial statements (for the year ended December 31, 2025) report total revenue of $5,147,039 — more than five times the City's own estimated cost of maintaining the whole park. Nearly all of it is grants and contributions (about $4.3 million) plus net special-events income ($640,799). TTC's revenue was higher still in 2024 — $7.8 million — lifted by the Seaholm capital campaign.

Note: The concession revenue alone — the once-public dollars now flowing through TTC from the Town Lake boating concessions — is estimated at roughly $690,000 for FY26, by itself approaching the City's entire annual cost of maintaining the park.

Rising costs for park users

When a nonprofit's business model replaces the Parks Department's, the price the public pays is no longer capped by the department's public-service mandate. The memorial bench is a small but telling example. For years the City ran a Memorial Bench Program that let any resident commemorate a loved one with an engraved plaque on a park bench — and in 2021 the Parks Board even endorsed a Commission on Seniors recommendation to add more of them. At that time, permanently adopting a City park bench cost about $2,400.

Instead of expanding it, the City paused the program. Austin Parks Department has no bench program. Today the only park bench program on the trail is run by The Trail Conservancy — available in just two locations, on boardwalks and bridges. Its cost to dedicate a bench: $15,000 for a 10-year term, or $30,000 in perpetuity. A $2,400 civic gesture has become a $15,000-to-$30,000 one.

Where a portion of it goes

TTC's most recent publicly available IRS Form 990 (fiscal year 2024) lists its highest-paid staff by name:

  • Hanna Cofer, Interim CEO (about 5 months) — $144,864 (plus $13,381 in other compensation)
  • Kimberly McNeeley, CEO (about 6 months) — $120,130 (plus $5,854)
  • Jessica Stewart, Chief Development Officer — $119,838 (plus $11,847)
  • Grady Reed, VP of Park Operations — $112,101 (plus $12,539)
  • Mandi Thomas, Chief Marketing Officer — $110,905 (plus $12,469)

That is five six-figure earners in a single year (two of them CEOs serving only part of the year during a leadership transition), out of total salaries, compensation, and benefits of $1,900,356.

The 990 also raises a governance flag. TTC reports that it has a written conflict-of-interest policy — yet on the same return it discloses a related-party deal. A paid outside fundraising consultant, Sarah Story ("Sarah Story Consulting"), was paid $100,000 to serve as "Project Campaign Manager" on a fundraising campaign that took in $2.8 million (she was paid $100,000; TTC kept the remaining $2.7 million). She is not on TTC's board or staff — but the 990's Schedule L ("Transactions with Interested Persons") discloses that she is a family member of one of TTC's officers, directors, or key employees, which is what makes the payment a related-party transaction. Separately, a member of TTC's own board of directors, Ashley Fisher, was paid $35,000 — board members are ordinarily uncompensated volunteers. Neither is necessarily improper, but both are exactly the kind of related-party detail the public deserves to weigh — and neither is visible anywhere the City reports on the partnership.

The trade-off, in plain terms

  • The Parks Department's cost to maintain the entire 295 acres of Town Lake Metropolitan Park is about $1M a year. To drop this from its budget by 2032, it has awarded a POMA contract to TTC (Park Operations and Maintenance Agreement).
  • TTC leverages its POMA authority over the park, including the future Seaholm Intake Facility, to generate over $5M a year, which it spends on unverified "park operations and maintenance," TTC salaries — nearly $2M — and future capital improvements to convert the Seaholm Intake Facility into an event venue to be managed — and monetized — by TTC.
  • Commercial boating-concession rent revenue is now paid to TTC, not the General Fund, valued at $690K in 2026.
  • A TTC commemorative bench now costs the public $15K–$30K, and there is no commemorative-bench option provided by the City of Austin.

We aren't saving the park money. We're handing over control of it, and the revenue that comes with it, and trusting a private organization to spend it well — while the City hides the details that would let us check.

Sources

All figures come from the City of Austin's own records and public filings:

  • PARD maintenance-cost figure: 03-18-2022 Chute-Canul email to Director McNeeley (City file C259108). → document
  • TTC FY2025 total revenue: TTC audited financial statements, year ended 12/31/2025 (City file C324162).→  document
  • TTC executive compensation and Schedule L: TTC FY2024 IRS Form 990 (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer).
  • Bench program: Sarah Faust email to activists, 2026-06-15; City Memorial Bench Program page; TTC bench-dedication pricing (verified online). →  2021 article  →  TTC website
  • FY26 concession estimate (~$690,000). →  document 

Diana Prechter is an Austin parks advocate who researches City of Austin park-partnership agreements through public records.

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