LA's parks system decimated: Nat'l rankings highlight Mayor and City Council's damaging policy

The Trust for Public Lands' latest ParkScore ranking of the parks systems in major US cities was just released.  While New York  ranks #2, Los Angeles ranks ... 34th.  Detroit for all of its problems ranks considerably higher than Los Angeles.

“You can’t have a great city without great parks,” said Mr. Benepe, who, under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, oversaw 1,700 parks and beaches during a period of expansion and major capital investment.

Black on the bar graph shows the
funding taken from LA's parks since 2007.
(click image to enlarge)

Benepe's statement certainly does not bear any resemblance to Los Angeles' dedication to its parks. LA City leaders have effectively stolen $151 million in mandated park funding from LA's parks department since 2007 and used it to cover holes in other City departments' budgets. This this Los Angeles' version of 'dedication' - a policy of completely decimating LA's parks.

You will hear LA politicos brag about Mayor Villaraigosa's 50-parks initiative... an initiative with funding for the acquisition of 50 postage stamp-sized parks, but no funding -- zero -- for maintenance, programming, or security going forward. Hardly a significant investment in LA's parks, particularly when compared to New York.

Meanwhile it only gets worse for LA's parks this next fiscal year. Although Mayor-elect Garcetti is a signatory on ParksSave's pledge to restore parks funding, Garcetti as councilmember, the Mayor, and City Council unanimously approved taking another $70 million in chargebacks ($64 million) and hidden indirect charges ($7 million) from the Department of Recreation and Parks during the upcoming year alone. Another $70 million in one year!

The compounded result of the Mayor and City Council's policy is that today, the Department of Recreation and Parks is at risk of losing its recreation function completely.  Let me repeat that: Los Angeles is at risk of losing all public recreation programming. Now that's dedication.

Garcetti as Mayor does have the opportunity to change all of this destruction come July 1 when he takes the oath of office, however, and one hopes he realizes what is at stake.


“You can’t have a great city without great parks” is one of those universal knowns, whether here in the states or anywhere else on Planet Earth.  Yet the City of Los Angeles actively steals millions from its parks, dishonoring the foresight Angelenos had when they tried to protect LA's parks by mandating special funding specifically for parks in the City Charter.

Shameful.

Stay tuned for the deflecting, marginalizing, and scapegoating of managers that is sure to follow.

Mayor's budget for Rec and Parks targets LA's most underprivileged

Update II:  Ron Kaye covers this issue today.

Update:   Stephen Box at CityWatch discusses the transparent diversion from any real budget conversation for the Dept. of Recreation and Parks that took place between Commission President Barry Sanders and the B&F committee. 
---

Image credit: http://www.uwyo.edu/sjrc/

Thursday morning, this author went downtown to the City's Budget and Finance Committee hearing on the Mayor's proposed budget for the Department of Recreation and Parks. I went to speak on the social injustice this budget represents, and point out some of the most questionable if not outright illegal charge-backs to the department this budget takes.

As I stood in line for my turn at the podium, I noted that perhaps only 1 or 2 of a committee of 5 were even bothering to listen to the members of the public, concerned people who had taken time from work to go downtown and testify during the public hearing. I therefore suddenly found myself compelled to alter my planned comments.

Here is the full text of what I had planned to say if the committee had actually been listening.

Honorable committee members and Chairman Parks,

During this committee’s discussion on creating an Inspector General on Monday, many of you explicitly expressed your concern that the Mayor’s office has not been doing their job with respect to making sure funds owed to this City are collected. A number of the Controller’s recent audits punctuate this fiscally damaging failure.

So if the Mayor’s office isn’t doing their job, I think it is fair to ask “what are they doing, exactly”?

Declaring outright war through this budget on those citizens in this City who are least able to fight back, that’s what.

If furloughs are now off the table, with this prejudicial budget of the Mayor’s, the Department of Recreation and Parks is left with just 56% of their total appropriation to use to provide parks services to the public – just 56%! That’s less money than Fiscal Year 2000, and since 2000, thousands of acres of parkland and numerous facilities have been added to your districts and are now the department’s responsibility.

This budget is a crime. It preferentially impacts the lower socio-economic children of Los Angeles. It’s these kids who rely on City parks the most. And the vast majority of their families have no idea this resource is under attack. After all, most of them are busy just trying to make ends meet, working blue collar jobs where they aren’t able to look at a computer for budget information or listen to Councilphone to try to keep on top of this.

This committee – especially Councilmember Parks – recently stood up for the Libraries and what they provide to some of the most underprivileged in this City. The Department of Recreation and Parks provides everything Libraries do: safe places to go after school and on weekends where kids receive educational programming. Same as Libraries.

But in addition, parks provide healthy low-cost exercise and sports in a time when childhood obesity is at epidemic levels, especially in LA City and County where in some districts it approaches 26% of our children – children who rely on the civil servants sitting here to provide subsidized, healthy physical exercise opportunities for them.

Recreation and Parks is where you get the most bang for the buck for these kids. Yet the Mayor’s office unveils this travesty of a budget directly targeting these very children.


Much of this budget crime contains some highly unethical and legally questionable “charge-backs”. Let’s talk about some of these very questionable charge-backs:

TRASH: a new charge for FY2012.

Trash is generated primarily by parks visitors exactly like trash on the streets and any other City property… Citizens bring this trash on their own onto park property. It is not generated by the Department. How can you possibly justify this charge as a department expense?

(Trash payment = $3.7 million, equivalent to ~74 employees laid off)

ERIP: Most if not all of the other City departments who offered ERIP are being made whole through borrowing. Why is RAP the only dept being forced to use their allocation to pay their ERIP costs?

(ERIP cash payment = $4.3 million, equivalent to ~86 employees laid off)

NO FURLOUGHS:  (+$12 million in expenses, equivalent to ~240 employees laid off)

WATER AND POWER: LADWP is a City-owned utility who uses park properties for their infrastructure (“Infra-squatting”, if you will) yet is still charging another City Department, Recreation and Parks, full price. However, they are not paying Recreation and Parks the requisite franchise fees for use of their various properties. Franchise fees are something they would have to pay to any other regular ratepayer.

Is this legal? It certainly isn’t right or fair.

What it is is a thinly veiled way to sweep charter-mandated parks funds into the General Fund, something explicitly illegal according to the City Charter.

Departments providing “critical services” don’t pay LADWP fees. With childhood obesity fees in your own districts as high as 26%, how could anyone sit there and say Rec and Parks services are not critical City services for the most underprivileged under your own stewardship?

(Utilities cost = $16 million, equivalent to ~320 employees laid off)


You know, as a volunteer I put in more than 900 hours of hard physical work for this department each year because I believe wholeheartedly in their core mission for the people of Los Angeles. All the people.

The funds permanently allocated by the City Charter to the Department of Recreation and Parks says that The People agree with me.

I need to see one of you here on this committee stand up for the most underprivileged in this City. You all need to stand up as a committee against the Mayor’s office.... For this department. For the children of this City who need you to defend them against this assault.

This is war against the citizens of Los Angeles, aimed directly at the underprivileged. End it now.
--

Disturbingly, but not surprisingly, when all was said and done in the hearing no one on the Budget and Fiance committee stood up for The People.

Meanwhile, in a total disconnect from what happened today, Budget and Finance chair Bernard Parks is made to look good once again by the Dept of Recreation and Parks.



Additional:

Read the list of services that the Department of Recreation and Parks has already had to cut during the past three years due to the Mayor's budgeting approach.
 
Read the full letter and all attachments sent to the Budget and Fiance committee regarding this year's budget by Department of Recreation and Parks.




 

Zoo parking charge will hit Griffith Park like a ton of bricks

The Los Angeles City Council begins its budget deliberations this Friday.  Yesterday, the Budget and Finance committee voted on their final recommendations to council. As D-Zahn reports, included in those recommendations are things like an additional 1000 layoffs to cover parts of the Mayor's budget that are not concretely funded.
There are also at least two important committee recommendations that will be heard beginning Friday parks advocates and users need to be aware of. One is the removal of all external review of the privatization of the Los Angeles Zoo. The other is the overt bypassing of the Arts Parks Health and Aging committee public hearing and analysis on whether to charge parking at the LA Zoo.  (see pg 23, marked pg 15 of this document)

The LA Zoo sits on Griffith Park-deeded land.  Parks users as well as Zoo-goers utilize the parking, and overflow from the Gene Autry museum - a museum paying just $1 per year for land valued at $600,000 in rent per year - conveniently parks there. 


Let's analyze this move, since City Council refuses to do due diligence.  The idea of charging to park in Griffith Park affects Zoo patrons and parks users, but it is being proffered chiefly by West Side guy Bill Rosendahl as a Zoo revenue-generating option.  Yet when one suggests that the Zoo - who is asking for the revenue - should simply add fifty cents or $1 to their admission prices, you have certain councilmembers looking at you in horror. 'How can you do that to the families'??!?  they exclaim, as if it is somehow something different.  (duuuuh.)

Charging at a Griffith Park parking lot is precedent-setting. There is no doubt about this.  When the Zoo lot costs money, parking will be pushed onto already heavily-impacted streets and other parking areas in Griffith Park.  Families and children will be dodging across those streets and through traffic to get to the Zoo entrance.  The Autry Museum, across the street from the Zoo, will then be "forced" to charge for parking, too.  The dominoes fall from there, and your City park will be lined up for the plucking.

Another, broader precedent is being set here.  The City Council is willfully removing any distinction between "parking revenue" as in organized parking structures and City lots, and, in essence, all City properties. Unchecked now, this will ultimately change your everyday experience in Los Angeles as it propagates.


We're pretty sure Councilman Tom LaBonge asked ... nay, begged to have this bypassed by his committee. As he seeks re-election in March 2011, it's the only way for Mr. Griffith Park to even begin to pretend this dangerous precedent isn't on his tenuous watch.

Most people, including the Griffith Family, won't be fooled.

B&F Comm members snub BudgetLA, SF Valley

Last night at Van Nuys city hall was the lone B&F roadshow hearing for the San Fernando Valley. I dutifully hauled myself down there to participate in the public process, hoping that some semblance of rational thought had finally crept into the City's plan for addressing a historic budget crisis.

Silly me.

Thirty or so members of the public were there, but most of the committee itself wasn't: Paul Koretz, Jan Perry, and Bill Rosendahl didn't bother to show. I'm sure they had good reasons they couldn't make it. (It's tough being a rock star.) Greig Smith and chair Bernard Parks were there, but even they know that two of five does not constitute a quorum.

Nice way to snub the Valley, guys.

As for the hearing itself, the CAO did most of the talking and all of it was the usual garbage we've read in the papers and blogs, sounding pretty much like a certain Gary Larson cartoon:

"Mayor is in charge and on course blah blah economic downturn blah blah couldn't see it coming blah blah layoffs the only answer blah blah blah hiring more police blah blaaaaaah blah layoffs done in a considered fashion is the cure blah blah pension reform blah blah never bankruptcy blah blah . "

With his speech, the CAO proved himself to be the most shameless mouthpiece for the Mayor there is - even more so than the LA Times. One hopes the masses out there understand this when they read a quote or hear a sound byte from that office.

Noteworthy is that the CAO did not admit that the considered layoffs are simply to cut 1000 employees with less than five years on the job, regardless to impact on services.

At this point in the Budget soap opera, it is clear the Mayor has assigned himself to be the defacto General Manager of the entire city, making all major managerial decisions for every department in town. When the entire house of cards crashes - and it will - Villaraigosa will need to have himself fired. It's all his show - he's defining course of action and is controlling the execution. (good word, 'execution'.)


As advertised, the BudgetLA folks were indeed at the hearing in force with measured discussion about solutions, transparency, bankruptcy, and having a seat at the table. Since most of their commentary made sense, they were resoundingly ignored. Bernard Parks was too busy texting while most of them were speaking to absorb much of what was said, anyway.

The level of commentary aimed at the public by Parks and somewhat by the CAO was really simplistic, to the point of being patronizing. Yes, they didn't have a quorum, but what the committee did have was a room of people who had a clue about the budget situation. Rather than engaging in informed discussion which the City Attorney did say the committee sans quorum could do, the message was in essence:

'This is a complex problem, and all you little children don't have a clue what you are talking about. Let the grown-ups worry about it. Here's your milk and cookies. 'Nite 'nite.'


It probably goes without saying, but the lone B&F roadshow hearing in the San Fernando Valley was a complete waste of anyones' time if you actually care about the City. I left very seriously thinking that it is time for the Valley to cut loose the City Hall baggage and secede.

A lot of Valley people who have recently run for public office were actually in the audience last night. Wondering if Pete Sanchez, Tamar Galatzan, Mike McCue, Noel Weiss, and Zuma Dogg - a Valley guy at heart - all has the same 'secession' feeling I did.