Scooped everyone's asses today with my article today for CityWatch.
Will get no credit anywhere for doing so.
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12
Aug
2014
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Written by Kristin Sabo
VIEWS
ALONG THE WAY-Although there is a pretty good paper trail in the press
documenting the promise, the Mayor’s Office has changed their collective
mind -- Jon Kirk Mukri
(Photo left with Jan Perry) will, in fact, not be returning to manage
the Department of Recreation and Parks. Interim General Manager Mike Shull is the Mayor’s new choice to run the department.
Love him or hate him, Jon Kirk Mukri is a hell of a damn good manager. The best the City has.
Before taking the position at Recreation and Parks – the job he
always wanted and truly loved – Mukri reformed a completely
dysfunctional General Services Department.
Always a team player, when asked by
Mayor Garcetti
to temporarily manage a publicly dysfunctional Department of
Transportation, Mukri agreed to do so just until Garcetti’s team could
find new blood, an outsider, to take over.
This past week, the Mayor’s Office has decided not to keep that
verbal contract, and the best manager City Hall has is out. The big
loser in this decision is the public – the Citizens of Los Angeles.
From 2004 to 2013, Jon Mukri held Recreation and Parks together,
keeping it going and continuing to provide much needed services and
improvements to the Los Angeles public and parks users under truly
crippling economic hardship - hardship that most of the public never
really knew was happening.
What most don’t fully realize is that during his tenure at Recreation
and Parks, Jon Mukri managed to make City Hall electeds look great with
new parks and programs in spite of the fact that, simultaneously, his
department was being bled dry by the same City Hall people.
The blood-letting was brutal and extensive. Beginning in 2007, the
Mayor and City Hall removed all General Fund subsidies to Recreation and
Parks to the tune of tens of millions of dollars annually.
They then implemented
“chargebacks” as
a way to take away City Charter-mandated funding – dedicated parks and
recreation funding - from the department. Between 2007 and 2013,
“chargebacks” from RAP Operations totaled $155 million. City Hall then
cut the Recreation and Parks workforce by almost 40%.
Recreation and Parks is the most direct service-intensive department
in the City. Take away the employees, you take away those services,
period.
It’s a testament to the skills of Jon Mukri and that of his chosen
team that the Department of Recreation and Parks even exists as a
functional entity under such a prolonged blood-letting by City Hall. But
not only did the department continue to function, in many brilliant
ways they excelled.
During this time, Jon Murki and his team created 45 brand new City parks, and there are another 30 new parks in the works.
They created a Public-Partnership Division that has ongoing
partnerships with many high-profile non-profits and agencies to its
credit at this time.
The golf concession was spun-off as its own cost center so that it
became a revenue-generator instead of costing the department money
annually. One Citywide Needs Assessment was completed and a second one
is underway.
Corruption was rooted out within municipal sports and at least one ex-employee went to prison.
Front-line public safety departments including Police and Fire do not have to pay for water and power in Los Angeles.
Recreation and Parks
is on the front line of public safety.
Healthy, available children’s recreation programming keeps an awful lot
of kids from getting into real trouble in their lives. This is not some
theory to be debated. It’s a well-proven fact.
On the front line in the field, the department’s Park Rangers are a
POST-certified peace officer agency patrolling parks and recreation
centers. It doesn’t get any more front line that that.
But through “chargebacks”, the Department of Recreation and Parks
does have to pay anyway, to the tune of $20-30 million annually.
Jon
Mukri took on the job of offsetting this impact. State of the art
artificial turf fields are in the process of being installed City-wide
as water-saving and maintenance reducing measures. Water consumption was
reduced by 35% through the installation of green technologies and
practices.
Best environmental practices were utilized to restore a heavily
impacted Griffith Park after the significant damage it sustained in the
2007 fire, and hundreds of acres of the park were added through the Save
the Hollywood Sign campaign.
During his tenure, the department installed almost 30 universal
playgrounds including the region’s first universal access baseball
field, increasing inclusive play across Los Angeles.
Mukri was also a proponent of ERIP – the incentive plan to allow senior, experienced employees retire early, stating that
“ERIP
provided a more sensible program to reduce personnel costs while
maintaining the dignity of the exceptional employees of our City”.
Then there are the Quimby funds. Quimby funds are assessed fees on
development projects that significantly impact the immediate
neighborhood. They are required to be spent on recreation with a mile or
so of the project as a remediation for the project to those directly
impacted, and that makes sense from a social justice standpoint. Those
directly impacted receive remediation.
As they did with the City-Charter mandated funding for Recreation and
Parks, City Hall continues to drool over the thought of taking the
Quimby pot of money for their own pet projects. During his tenure,
Mukri’s team created a GIS system to manage this nearly intractable and
tightly regulated funding.
Mukri himself managed to keep that pot of funding from the same fate
as the City charter mandated funds. Today it remains within Recreation
and Parks, being used for the legally-defined purpose.
That won’t last long with Mukri out - you can be pretty sure that
City Hall will soon pass a Charter change that allows them to take these
monies, too.
Previous Mayor Villaraigosa’s office continually threatened Mukri
with removal through the subtle, personal touch of the hideously
over-promoted egomaniac, Jeff Carr. Throughout the personal threats,
Mukri continued to make them look good over and over – “them” including
then-Councilmember Garcetti. Mukri always had a way of giving the City
Hall vultures what they wanted, but managed to do it without losing the
recreation programming so needed in this City.
That is a hell of a talent, and a commitment by the gentlemen to the
Citizens of Los Angeles. Other good managers receiving the Jeff Carr
treatment eventually gave up and bailed –
Bill Robertson retired (and sadly passed away shortly thereafter), and
Rita Robinson left for a job with Los Angeles County. Only Jon Mukri remained dedicated to the mission.
When Garcetti was elected, there were a lot of questions as to
whether they would keep Jon Mukri in Recreation and Parks. "Those in the
know" were saying that Mayor Garcetti would be exacting revenge on the
Recreation and Parks' General Manager because Mukri's significant other,
Claire Bartels,was Wendy Gruel's chief of staff when Greuel was a councilmember and Deputy Controller when Greuel was elected City Controller.
Instead of being removed outright, Mukri was asked to clean up the
Department of Transportation, and was clearly promised to be returned to
Recreation and Parks when a new general manager was found. That promise
was published widely enough at the time to easily corroborate it.
Unfortunately, as longtime City Hall observers like
Ron Kaye
and others have pointed out extensively, Mayor Garcetti and his people
cannot be trusted. They blow with the breeze. They tell you one thing
then do another as easily as they choose what tie the Mayor will wear or
when the Mayor should drop an f-bomb.
It probably isn’t a surprise to anyone then that the Mayor’s people
are pulling Mukri out of the Department of Recreation and Parks now.
Jon Mukri would be at retirement age in a year, and he is not getting
the chance to retire out of the department and mission he loved. A
year goes by quickly, and it’s sad that such a committed and talented
public servant is not being afforded even this small token in return for
service above and beyond the call of duty.
Given the real talent this gentleman has, it is the Citizens of Los Angeles and our City parks who are being punished.
Ironically Ms. Claire Bartels remains in the Deputy Controller position today.
Recreation and Parks was pretty much the last department standing,
having not had its leadership replaced with vacuous yes men or unknowing
outsiders. A department that hadn’t been bled dry of decency and the
leadership that somehow finds a way to provide actual services to tax
payers.
Mike Shull is the new General Manager, effective any
day now. He was part of Jon Mukri’s team as the department’s chief
engineer – the new construction guy. All of City Hall loves the new
construction Shull has done for them over the years.
The recreation function of the department is what is most threatened by City Hall’s financial draining.
We’ll find out if the Mayor’s new general manager is up to this challenge, or if recreation will finally die in Los Angeles.
Now, *magic* - another new, different plan. And, apparently, Griffith Metro gets it all from what is implied here. Meanwhile, 10 Rangers barely covers the attrition in the past few years, much less provides any new service.
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