BATON ROUGE - We've been telling you about BREC's plan to sell several parks in north Baton Rouge over the last few weeks.

"You can go down the list, and everything it says is African American community, everything is African American community, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to read that," District 10 resident Rev. Levert Kemp said.

Some residents living in districts 7 and 10 say community parks mean a lot. It's a place for children to play and where people can come together and spend time with one another.

"If it closes, kids are going to get in all kinds of trouble over the summer. The summer is approaching, so these kids need something to do," resident Jacqueline Culbert said.

Crystal Ellis-Luter says communities are reliant on the parks.

"They are reliant on them for connection; they are reliant on them for public safety. They're reliant on them for exercise. Parks are similar to schools, and they are instrumental in a thriving community," Ellis-Luter said.

BREC declared Belfair and Wenonah parks obsolete and plans to sell them both.

"Y'all are doing what you want to, like you want to, and think we're supposed to be okay with it, and we are not," East Baton Rouge Metro Councilwoman Carolyn Coleman said.

Officials with BREC say the parks are underutilized, pointing to a study that tracked cell phone data to determine how many people use the park.

But some residents question whether the parks are underutilized because of underinvestment.

"Different parks are not used, but if you don't have anything to draw people to the park, a slide, a boat, a swing, a concrete basketball court, then you go to some you have vevor drums, you have a rock climbing wall," Kemp said.

If the BREC Commission gives final approval to sell the parks, it will go through a public bid, with the appraisal price as the starting rate; anyone can bid on buying the parks.

"All of the dollars and resources that we gain from that sale will be utilized with the same service area as that park and dedicated to another park within that area, so we won't be taking resources from one area and spending them and allocating them to a different area," BREC Assistant Director of Planning and Development Brett Wallace said.

There are several other parks that BREC plans to sell, and a community engagement meeting for those will be held on Thursday at the Charles R Kelly Community Center. The meeting will be held from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.