CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : There’ll Be No ‘Wonder Years’ for Many in the Summer Sun : The poor will again be denied the recreation that others expect--a shameful situation for rich Los Angeles.

As the warm days of summer begin, many of the children in Los Angeles will head to the parks, summer camps, trips to the mountains and the beaches, Dodger games, ballet, baseball and municipal swimming pools. Parents, many of whom work, can be assured of quality programming, a wide selection of activities and a safe and nurturing environment. Park user fees will be considered modest by middle-class standards. These parks, largely in Los Angeles’ middle and upper-class neighborhoods, will offer children a “Wonder Years” summer experience.

But in scores of other city parks across Los Angeles--mostly cramped sites in poor neighborhoods--the prospects are less inviting. These parks, most of which are located in working-poor neighborhoods, are staffed by dedicated recreation directors who are asked to perform miracles, and some do. Parks in working-poor communities are burdened by regressive user fees and limited supplies and staff, and are faced with devastating social problems. Many parents will turn away from them and select stairwells, back yards and TV for their children’s summer recreation.

Welcome to recreation apartheid, a socio-economic phenomenon that encourages state-of-the-art recreation and leisure programming for society’s haves, and dead parks and limited facilities for the have-nots.

Children in Los Angeles’ working-poor neighborhoods have less access to public parks, tennis courts, soccer fields, swimming pools and quality recreation programs than their counterparts in coastal and valley communities. Even though the city has cleaned up, painted and turfed 30 urban recreation centers, added rangers and modest services, the city’s Recreation and Parks Commission oversees a park system dominated by commercialization and marketing forces. To their credit, the mayor and the commission have pumped $3.5 million over two years into refurbishing inner-city parks, and the physical results are impressive. But the structural and systemic changes that are needed have not taken place.

At the root of the problem lies property-tax limitations, local cutbacks, recessions and misguided city policies. Add a black middle-class exodus, increased crime, drug abuse and gang violence, and you set the stage for the decline of inner-city parks.

Los Angeles, like recreation and park agencies throughout the country, responded aggressively to the problems of the ‘80s by plugging revenue gaps with enterprise strategies. Parks were encouraged to operate as businesses. Armed with marketing and user-fee approaches, Los Angeles’ parks recycled revenue and “bought back” recreation specialists, a crucial element in the delivery of leisure services. Suburban parks in affluent communities were soon expanding programs, adding child-care and extended day-care services, sports camps and cultural programs. Fees were reasonable because of high demand. Direct costs were met and profits were used to “buy” additional staff and equipment.

Some suburban parks raise six-figure amounts, while those in poor communities raise at best a few thousand dollars. Northridge Park, cited by Los Angeles Recreation and Parks chief Jim Hadaway as a model, employed 60 recreation specialists last summer and offered state-of-the-art youth services.

Inner-city recreation directors who must deal with poverty, drugs and gangs have little buy-back funds, few supplies and modest programs. These directors who frequently borrow, beg and use their own money do a remarkable job. Still, inner-city parents, most of whom are poor and single, are frequently asked to pay fees of $25 so one child can play football.

The city’s eight mountain camps, which could provide a physical and psychological release for city children, are heavily used by private groups through the permit process and are unavailable to poor children. Shameful stuff for a city and county as privately rich as ours.

The heart of the problem is that much of the city’s $90.7-million budget is driven by an outmoded equality formula that relates physical amenities, such as park acreage, swimming pools and building square footage, to resources, including gardeners and recreation directors. The formula ignores community at-risk factors--poverty, crime, drugs and children having children. Add to that the hundreds of thousands of dollars in buy-back accounts that escape budget scrutiny, and we have a formula that penalizes children for having poor parents. In Chicago, the have-nots decided to fight back. They mobilized public-interest law firms and the U.S. Justice Department to sue park districts on grounds related to non-discrimination in publicly financed programs, specifically the Housing and Community Development Act. In 1986, the park district agreed to spend $60 million over a five-year period to improved recreation services and park facilities in black and Latino communities. It is not clear that Chicago and Los Angeles have the same problems, but it is clear that the current system in Los Angeles is unacceptable.

The commission should devise a program that gives all of our children a summer for which they can look forward.