The city may own Ramada Park, but neighbors say it belongs to the community.
Watch how this neighborhood is taking the matter into their own hands below:
That belief brought residents and neighbors to City Hall Monday as the future of the property was considered by the Billings City Council.
On paper, this land is city-owned. But ask the people who live around here, and they'll tell you it's much more than that. This is where their children play, neighbors gather, and memories are made. And they plan to keep it that way.
For Mary Agamenoni and her neighbors, Ramada Park, which stretches between Morledge Street and Ramada Drive, isn't just another piece of city property. It's rooted in the community.
"I grew up in this neighborhood. My grandparents lived here, and I came to this park," Agamenoni said. "My kids are in the park seven days a week. Rain or shine, they're there."
So when the park's future came before the Billings City Council, they showed up to make sure city leaders knew exactly what they could lose. The question before the council: What should happen to the city-owned property, and should it be disposed of?
Councilman Scott Aspenlieder said the park has potential for revenue to the city that can't be used as is.
"A lot of these undeveloped parks around the city, like Ramada, have remained undeveloped because there is no mechanism to fund the construction of them," Aspenlieder said.
"It is just a complete open tract of land, unimproved," Aspenlieder said.
But keeping this land in neighborhood hands doesn't necessarily mean keeping every inch exactly how it is.
Thomas Smith lives right next door to the park, and he hopes to purchase his portion of the property.
"We're proposing doing a change of boundary line," Smith said.
A boundary line change would adjust the limits of the park to the ditch that runs through it. This would adjust Thomas Smith and his neighbor's property lots to be larger, in return also raising their property tax rates.
Smith says the park remaining in its neighborhood holds value in Billings and is not a waste of space. He says the money used for the purchase of an adjusted lot would go into maintenance and sprinklers for the park to make the grass healthier and overall health of the park in check.
"So the kids can play their baseball, soccer and all of that," Smith said.
This is no small project, so what happens here won't happen overnight.
"Over the next six months to work towards creation of a special improvement district to put the improvements in place," Aspenlieder said.
So for now, this grass is still a gathering place. And neighbors who packed City Hall say they'll keep showing up to make sure they have a say in what happens next. Smith says it's a community effort and the city has been helpful in the entire process.
Aspenlieder applauds this community for coming to the Billings City Council with a solution to a problem, rather than complaints. For now, it's the neighbors living near Ramada Park that will really notice how important it is for everybody near it.
"We were just hopeful to keep it as a park," Agamenoni said.
Related: 'Plain old dirt': Billings considers selling 11 lots despite neighbor push back
