Uneasy Peace

Frustration Simmers in Parks Department

By NATHAN S. WELTON
South Coast Beacon

A morning stroll through Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens is refreshing. Emerging light casts long shadows across the grass, smiling dogs tug their owners along the paths and couples walk hand in hand, smelling flowers.

The park’s tranquility, however, doesn’t seem to represent the inner workings of the administration that maintains it.

Over the past few months, people from across town have accused the Parks and Recreation Department of acting as its own entity, routinely ignoring park neighbors, park users and even its own employees. Among many of the gripes: the city’s park rangers want to be armed, but claim their requests have been ignored; park neighbors, after numerous protest letters to management and city council, are irritated that the department’s caretakers and horticulturalists were shuffled to other posts last month; and employees have yet to express satisfaction about their new positions.

Although many cite an undercurrent of frustration arising from concerns that fall on allegedly deaf ears, department officials contend that the only way to create a successful system is to diversify — and in doing so, they acknowledge stepping on toes is an infrequent, unintentional necessity.

“You’re going to have these flare-ups when an organization is active,” said Assistant Director Jeff Cope. “But if we’re going to remain the world-class organization that I think we are, we have to be adapting. In a few months, the problems will subside and things will settle in.”

Despite some negative sentiments, the department seems healthy at first glance. If Santa Barbara were among the largest 55 cities in the nation, its park acreage per resident would rank it at 14th, according to a recent study conducted by the Trust for Public Land. At 1,800 acres in 57 parks for 89,000 residents, some 20.2 acres exist per 1,000 people. This gives Santa Barbara has as much public space per person as Honolulu, nearly as much as Portland and almost seven times as much as Fresno.

In recent years, residents have enjoyed a renovated Chase Palm Park, rocked out at free summer concerts by the beach and attended numerous ethnic festivals. The department has partnered with other community groups to rent out playing fields, it has promoted courses with Santa Barbara City College and Adult Ed and it has sponsored community-wide swimming classes. What’s more, the region’s successful creek maintenance program — including cleanups and bioswale installations — falls under the auspices of Parks and Recreation.

“Looking at the big pictures, we just completed 100 years of park celebrations in 2002, and much of the credit for that goes to staff and people in the trenches,” said Cope. “We have garden parks and beach parks and trails into the mountains, we have open space and greenbelts and we have to understand ecosystems and natural processes. There are so many little things it takes to make it work, and it’s working.”

Employees, on the other hand, tell a different story. Morale is as low as it’s been, some said, and few have the motivation or desire to work hard.

Carol Terry, an active member of the Santa Barbara County Horticultural Society, has worked for the department for 12 years and until recently maintained Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens, arguably the city’s most well-manicured recreation area. Last month, much to the dismay of many upper Eastside residents, she was shuffled to the beach in what department officials called “cross training.”

In the month preceding the switch, an outpouring of support flooded the parks department and city council.

“It is a wonderful thing when a job and a worker make a perfect fit. This is certainly the case with Carol Terry,” read one letter sent to city officials. “It would be a terrible mistake to move her to ‘beach’ work.”

A petition signed by nearly 50 residents read, “The park and the many people who seek spiritual refreshment and inspiration here will be the real losers if (Terry) goes.”

Similar letters appeared in support of Skofield Park’s resident caretaker Steve Spencer.

Still, on Nov. 1 officials reassigned their employees, and remain convinced they made the right decision.

“A reassignment was not what occurred — it was a rotation,” said parks and recreation director Richard Johns. “There was a purpose in doing that and it’s for the benefit of the employees, particularly for new position opportunities that have opened.”

While cleaning restrooms and sweeping up cigarette butts at Dwight Murphy Field, Terry declined commenting to the Beacon, but diligently performed her duties.

“That employee is not just cleaning restrooms at the beach,” said Johns. “She’s gaining knowledge of the entire park system, she’s cross training, she’s improving skills and she’s giving every employee an opportunity to do the same.”

Still, Terry was in the presence of another parks employee who was ‘training’ her to sanitize toilets, even though Terry reportedly spent two years perfecting that skill at Alameda Park in the ‘90s, when she first started with the department.

Although Cope and Johns both said the reassignment is simply the reinstatement of a past rotation policy, employees interviewed at the Parks and Recreation yard said the rotations are not appreciated yet are an emerging trend in personnel management. Question authority, they said, and you can rotate yourself elsewhere.

Longtime department employee Peter Lessels, now retired in Australia, was once the head grounds man at the Chase Palm Park expansion, but said he was transferred to a new park after expressing frustration to management regarding his job.

After seeing budget problems cause a manpower shortage, “I had a meeting with Richard Johns and told him the concerns about the deteriorations of the park, and he told me he was aware of it but didn’t care too much, and two weeks later I was transferred out of the park,” said Lessels. “This was the start of all this reshuffling: I went in to voice my concerns and two weeks later I’m on the beach park.”

Several parks workers who asked not to be named said the same thing happened to Terry after she maxed out her pay scale and asked to be reclassified to a more senior position. They also claimed the resident caretakers at Skofield and Franceschi were rotated as punishment after fighting the administration’s attempt to charge rent.

Still, Cope and Johns insist moves were simply managerial decisions that would only serve to improve the entire system.

“When you make changes for the good of the whole, sometimes people perceive that you’re taking something from them,” said Cope. Sometimes “they don’t see the bigger picture.”

Meanwhile, The Beacon reported last week that members of the Santa Barbara Youth Council, a group of teens with whom the city consults on issues involving young adults, felt neglected by Parks and Recreation regarding a teen center at the old Unity Shoppe building. Members of the Council said they were never consulted when Johns’ administration proposed to City Council turning the building into a consolidated youth services office space.

Besides the grounds crew and Youth Council, the rangers also complain of frustration. The parks are becoming dangerous, they contend, and they want to be armed.

They’re on track to issue 1,800 citations this year, according to calculations, up from 1,095 in 2001. They’ve made 62 arrests in the past few years and have witnessed drug abuse, lewd conduct and fights.

“On July 4, we found a guy beating another guy with a crowbar at Chase Palm Park,” said a ranger who asked not to be named. “What are we supposed to do, just sit around and wait for the police department to do something? The expectation of the public is that we should do something, but we’re not armed.

“It only takes three seconds for things to go to hell in a hand basket.”

As authorized by the California Penal Code, the rangers are peace officers with basic handgun training and authority to make arrests, but they said they’re also the only officers in the city without guns and the only ones required to wear bulletproof vests.

However, city officials said the rangers are instructed to call police at the first hint of potential violence, and that the majority of the citations the rangers issue are for benign offenses like parking violations or walking dogs off-leash.

“The rangers shouldn’t be armed,” said Johns. “We don’t feel it’s necessary and we have no plans to arm them. … The police department is the first line of defense.”

Police Sgt. Dave Gonzales said his department is adequately staffed to handle major park disturbances, and noted that recent violent incidences at city parks, like the two shootings at Bohnett Park, were just isolated circumstances.

“I wouldn’t say the parks are any more dangerous than compared to a few years ago,” he said.

At the end of the day, officials said much of the unrest comes from the administration’s attempts to make the best decisions for the parks system and for the residents of Santa Barbara.

“You have to plan, you have to use strategies and you have to make the best use of the resources — and whenever you make changes in that direction, there’ll be some misunderstanding of what your intents are, some miscommunication and some assumptions made without facts,” said Cope. “One thing I’ve found in a number of neighborhood meetings recently is that you get 30-40 neighbors out, and there’s only one park in the whole system as far as their concerned: their park.”

But whether its theirs or not, residents and employees seem to have fixated on one singular mantra.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.