As far as catch pharses go, "metro government" was 2002's it-expression. As the discussion on how to combine city and county government has progressed, "metro government" became more than just a way to make local government more efficient. The idea of a county and city merger has become a golden ticket, one-stop-shopping, silver-bullet method to spur growth in Polk County, calm city-suburb tension and boost Des Moines' apparent population. A plan was not sufficiently developed to be put before voters in last November's election, but that hasn't slowed chatter about a merger.

Behind the scenes, in the unhewn wilds of local government, another merger was taking place. Area parks and recreation departments have been searching for ways to combine their resources. In so doing, these departments hope to fully use shrinking budgets, better develop their facilities and coordinate services.

In the other words, they want more trails to connect. They want neighborhood parks to proliferate as quickly as housing developments. And the cities want to build community centers they simply can't afford - at least not alone.

92 pages of best-laid plans

The Polk County Conservation Board has a plan. Recently completed, it lays out a strategic mission for the next 10 years - what's next, what's wrong, how to fix it, and a few grand schemes and pipe dreams for good measure.

Polk County's parks are mainly regional ones - large parks that draw in users from outside the immediate area. Called destination parks, the county uses them to preserve natural resources by re-establishing wetland and prairie, establish and protect habitats for native species and even raise a few elk. About one half million visitors annually trek through the 1,800 acres of Jester Park, the county's largest park.

In total, the county manages 11,000 acres.

"One of our philosophies is to balance people use and natural protection," says Ben Van Gundy, director of the Polk County Conservation Board.

According to the conservation board's report, the agency fights some of the same challenges any local government entity does - maintaining adequate staffing and keeping politics out of its operations.

And the county has more unexpected problems. It struggles with establishing its name. Too few people realize which parks the county owns and manages, meaning the Polk County Conservation Board gets neither the attention or praise it thinks it deserves.

"I don't know if the public understands how the park system works," says Jodi Feight, a member of the Polk County Conservation Board. "When you go to Easter Lake, is that a Des Moines park or a state park or a county park?"

Some say this problem is a sign of a larger issue - a need for more coordination among area parks and recreation boards. In its 10-year plan, the county conservation board states it would like a full-time staff person to look for opportunities for the county to partner with municipalities.

"We could get together for better services for the public," Feight says. "There are a lot of egos between parks systems - who would fit where - and it's scary for a lot of people. But we could give better services. I've been in favor at least to work at it."

In its long-range planning, the county states it will emphasize "building more partnerships to improve delivery of service." Feight says Polk County should lead this process, and identify areas where it could share equipment, connect recreational areas and partner on projects with cities. The conservation board would like to hire a regional planning coordinator to "enhance planning efforts between the cities in Polk County and the county."

"I don't think we should be the controlling force," Feight says. "We have to look at combining, not that one entity would control another."

The money for such a position is not in the budget. Ironically, it could take regional funding to pay for a position, which would foster regional planning and coordination.

While the county has laid its thoughts out on paper, the cities are more modest in their talk of working together. Municipal leaders agree there's room to share, but emphasize the various parks departments' staffs already do a fine job chatting one another up about projects.

Suzette Jensen, chair of the Des Moines Parks and Recreation Commission, alls partnerships between municipalities or cities working with the county are already "fairly common."

"You don't want two pools next to each other just because the city limit's there," says Noel McKibbin, chair of the Urbandale Parks and Recreation Commission. "The individual staffs from each of the cities have a very viable communication network. For instance, the Menace Stadium - how many times did they move that around? In Ankeny, they stated, if Urbandale can't work it out, we'll talk to them, but we're not pulling the stadium away from Urbandale."

As Greater Des Moines grows larger, cities will need to work together to fund the sorts of large attractions an area of this size needs.

"A big issues is construction of regional facilities," says Gary Scott, director of West Des Moines Parks and Recreation. "The Des Moines area needs an indoor community 50-meter pool and one community alone should foot the bill."

Such group efforts will be especially important to the conservation board as it is forced to deal with a 10 percent budget cut. In putting together the 10-year plan, conservation board chair Red Brannan says they discovered service and facilities gaps that the county doesn't have the budget to fill. One way to save money will be to find places where cities and counties are offering overlapping services, and where they can work together.

"You'll find there are some duplications going on between us and, primarily, the city of Des Moines," he says. "Or at the very least, there needs to be a better level of coordination between the two entities in the operation of the park system."

On the South Side of Des Moines alone, the parks systems include Gray's Lake, Ewing Park, the A.H. Blank Golf Course and Blank Park Zoo, Easter Lake and Fort Des Moines Park.

"They're all basically within the same geographical area," Brannan says. "How should they all work together?"

Jensen doesn't see much opportunity to share staff or services, but says partnerships make some sense because people don't restrict their park use to those in their immediate neighborhood.

"People use parks in different areas because you use what's convenient and comfortable," she says. "I was at Grand View Park and spoke with a woman who comes in from Pleasant Hill, because Pleasant Hill doesn't have a wading pool. People think of park spaces without fees as being open to everyone. That's just the way things are."

In the meantime, Van Gundy has revived the Metro Parks Partnership. Once every three months, officials from parks departments across Central Iowa meet to figure out what's going on with one another.

Onward and forward, say the suburbs. How should such merging take place? According to many suburban parks officials, partnering is already occurring. And though more areas should be looked at for opportunities to work together, they say no formal arrangement is necessary.

The projects they're working on speak to their point:

- West Des Moines, Des Moines and Windsor Heights did a study three years ago on how to connect trails into Water Works Park, Scott says.

>- Clive and West Des Moines are jointly planning and designing aquatic facilities. Residents can buy a swim pass and go to any of three municipal pools in West Des Moines and Clive, Scott says. "They're managed separately, but it's a seamless operation," he says. The cities also jointly purchase pool supplies.

-West Des Moines is working with the Waukee School District to provide neighborhood parks to its fast-growing residential areas. By working with the district, the city can split the cost of parking lots and play equipment, so that both the schools and the city benefit.

-Johnston facilities coordinator Connie Maxwell says she sees few places where money could be saved by purchasing equipment with other cities. "Our public works director is really good at finding used equipment that we can make serviceable," she says. However, the city is open to associates on some larger projects, including one already in the works.

"We're looking at, perhaps, sharing resources to build a combination aquatic and recreation center with Urbandale, Grimes and the YMCA," Maxwell says. "That would bring a pool and recreation center to our citizens."

Urbandale's McKibbin says: "All of us are convinced, short of a bond referendum, none of us can individually finance it. But all of us combined can bring that sort of center to Urbandale."

-In Windsor Heights, a parks budget of less than $40,000 reflects the city's smaller size, but also hinders some projects. City Administrator Marketa Oliver estimated the city probably has less than three miles of trails. Still, it formed a formal partnership with the cities of Des Moines and West Des Moines to better evelop its trails. And it has other trail efforts in the works.

"The one trail we're working on now is between three-quarters of a mile and a mile," she says. "That would do a lot to help us out and connect us. It's the missing link in a regional trail system."

A trailhead for merging

A case could be made that the real term of the year for 2002 was "trails." In a recent survey conducted by Polk County, 44 percent of residents named trails as the park systems' most important feature. Because they connect parks to parks and residents to parks, trail systems increase accessibility to and use of existing parks, the conservation board's report states.

Area parks officials say trails are one of the best-coordinated services in the area.

"Our top priority is trail development," Scott says. The city's goal is to put a trail within one-half mile of all residents.

Once developed, the Principal Riverwalk will connect pre-existing trails in Des Moines, giving it a long trail corridor.

"Our systems come together real well," Jensen says. "The connecting links, many of the trails will hub in downtown Des Moines - the whole Riverwalk connecting into Gray's Lake will make a hub."

Despite these efforts, area trails also need the most work.

"The biggest area we need to figure out how to coordinate is in the area of trails," Brannan says. "Not only the trails and planning of them and construction of them, but the maintenance of them. A biker doesn't want to stop because he hits city limits.

"There are gaps in maintenance. If you had a system where they were all jointly working together in some mechanism and they reached a consensus on what needs to be done and how to do it, then we'd be better off."

Van Gundy says trails are one of the parks systems' most multijurisdictional areas, and as a result, "people just need to talk to each other a little more."

The person who can best tell the story about local trails is Donna Phipps, deputy director of the Polk County Conservation Board. Her office is filled with maps, many with dotted and solid lines representing different sorts of trails and potential trails crisscrossing each other.

In park and recreation circles, Phipps is known as "The Trail Guru."

Maxwell remembers a conversation she had with her boss shortly after she began her job in Johnston. "I said, 'If we just put a bridge over this part of the creek, we'd have a fantastic connection (between two trails).'" She was told to call Phipps.

"She sent us maps and recommendations and she knew who to talk to and - wham! - we had a project," she says. "It's that kind of outreach from Polk County that's made it possible for cities to (do these sorts of projects.) Ben and Donna make it easy."

Developing trails is nearly as complex as building roads, officials say. Because of the expense and intensive nature of these projects, cities often look to the county for help.

"We're working within the context of the Metropolitan Planning Organization to pitch a proposal for another trail connection," Oliver says. "That would be only in the city of Windsor Heights, but it brings our trails together and they connect to Urbandale and Des Moines. The trail project has been in the works for many, many years, but it got put on the back burner with all the street connections and so on, and we are the smallest of metro communities."

Phipps is doing her best to make the trails throughout the metro area connect. The idea for the Trestle to Trestle project originated with her. It's an 85-mile loop that the county is partnering with Des Moines and Johnston to build. Completed, it would be the largest in the state. Phipps has spent the last 15 years developing trails. "Trails are very expensive," she says. But the more extensive she can make the trail system, the easier it will be for people to access.

Even though cities agree they need to work together, and despite the county's call to look more intensively at the issue, municipal officials say that, beyond some potential regional facilities, joint management should only go so far.

"As we move forward, we'll be building things like (an indoor 50-meter pool)," West Des Moines' Scott says. "But with trails, we do a good job now. I don't see a benefit with making trail management part of a big agency."