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State Funds Pay For Neighborhood Parks

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WAMC
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Massachusetts is spending tens of millions of dollars to develop small urban parks.

Officials in Springfield secured two grants totaling $850,000 to transform a weed-infested school yard into a 6.5 acre park. A spray pad opened for children in time for this summer.Construction will begin later on a playground, ball fields and tennis courts. 

Gloria DeFillipo of the Pine Point Neighborhood Council said until now the closest park was more than 2 miles away. 

" It is a safe environment. You can bring your kids, sit under the shade and relax," she said. " I think it is terrific."

Massachusetts officials said a quarter of the state’s population now lives within a 10 minute walk to a park.

Paul Tuthill is WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief. He’s been covering news, everything from politics and government corruption to natural disasters and the arts, in western Massachusetts since 2007. Before joining WAMC, Paul was a reporter and anchor at WRKO in Boston. He was news director for more than a decade at WTAG in Worcester. Paul has won more than two dozen Associated Press Broadcast Awards. He won an Edward R. Murrow award for reporting on veterans’ healthcare for WAMC in 2011. Born and raised in western New York, Paul did his first radio reporting while he was a student at the University of Rochester.