Carson Ponders Slashing Budget of Much-Praised Park Programs : Finances: The city’s recreation system is known as one of the best in the South Bay. But staff salaries and park maintenance costs are now a prime target for the budget ax.

When Veterans Park opened in June, its supporters hailed it as the crowning achievement in the city of Carson’s 20-year master plan for its park system.

With its carpeted locker rooms and air-conditioned racquetball courts, the park’s massive sports complex has been favorably compared to private sports facilities. Dubbed “Club Med” by one Carson resident, the 12-acre park also includes two lighted tennis courts, two baseball diamonds and outdoor basketball courts.

Critics, however, were quick to point out that the project was almost $2 million over budget, and that operating and maintenance costs for the state-of-the-art park would be $1 million for the first year alone.

They say Veterans Park is a prime example of what’s wrong with the city’s parks department. They contend the park is simply too lavish and, like the department, is too expensive to operate.

Carson’s park system is widely regarded as one of the finest in the South Bay, but it has become a key issue during the last few months as council members have wrestled to craft a balanced budget for 1990-91.

Faced with stagnant sales tax revenues and rising expenses, city officials say budget cuts are inevitable. The Parks and Recreation Department, which accounted for 24% of the 1989 budget, has been targeted for the deepest cuts.

“There’s no question that our parks system is a model,” Mayor Vera Robles DeWitt said recently, “but how we’ll maintain it is a big dilemma.”

Since it was first formed in 1969, the parks department has been the largest or second-largest item in the city’s budget, according to present and former officials. Beginning with just two parks, the system has grown over the years to include 12 parks, a boxing center and an aquatics center.

A wide range of classes and programs have attracted a loyal and vocal constituency among Carson residents, who often jam the City Council chamber to lobby against proposed cuts in the parks department budget.

That public support, combined with the backing of various city councils through the years, for a time made former Parks Director Howard Homan among the most powerful political figures in Carson, knowledgeable city insiders say.

When he was hired in 1969, Homan recalls, there was “much public outcry about the lack of (park) facilities.” With strong support from city officials, he drafted the master plan for the park system.

But Homan, who recently retired under pressure from the council, had been increasingly criticized in recent years as some city officials began pressing to reorder the city’s spending priorities.

Homan, the city’s first and only parks director until he retired Nov. 1, contends that the department’s budget has been artificially high because it includes many costs that other cities charge to their public works departments.

Included in the $9.2-million parks budget in fiscal 1989-90, for example, were costs related to maintenance of all city buildings, landscaping, utilities and graffiti removal. The department actually spent only $7.3 million of its allocation after the council imposed a hiring freeze and cuts in capital purchases in all departments. But that figure was still about 24% of the total city expenditures of $29.9 million in 1989-90.

“If you took all the utilities out of our budget and put it in public works,” Homan said, “it would save us (the department) $1 million, but the total cost (to the city) is still there. Same with maintenance.”

However, City Administrator Jack Smith, who favors cutting the parks department budget, notes that all but two city buildings--City Hall and the Community Center--are park facilities. Landscaping and utility costs are also mostly related to park sites, said Smith, who also is acting as parks director until Homan’s replacement is selected.

City officials project that operational and maintenance costs for Veterans Park will exceed $1 million in its first year. Operating costs in future years are expected to be about $750,000 annually, although cuts in maintenance and staffing could reduce that figure.

Homan says the park can eventually become self-supporting. In its first five months of operation, the park has generated more than $100,000 in user fees, he said, well ahead of a projection of $156,000 for the entire year.

However, city officials doubt that the park will ever pay for itself. They compare it to the Community Center, a project similarly spearheaded by Homan that was built about nine years ago. Deputy City Administrator Scot Yotsuya said the center costs the city about $1.25 million annually and generates about $750,000 a year, largely through rental fees.

The 38,000-square-foot sports complex at Veterans Park includes a multipurpose gymnasium, a gymnastics and aerobics center and weight room. The city charges residents $15 to $40 a month to use the facilities, and fees are double that for non-residents.

Although the fees generate income for the city, they also have generated criticism from some residents who say they cannot afford them.

Dan Becerril, area director of the Young Life outreach organization, often brings youth groups to city parks for sports activities. During a recent basketball drill on the outdoor courts at Veterans Park, he noted that many of his teen-agers can’t afford to use the sports complex.

“There’s no question it’s beautiful,” Becerril said, motioning to the massive complex behind him. “But what’s the use of having a Cadillac or a Rolls if you can’t use it?”

Homan defends both Veterans Park and the Community Center as “major public relations tools for the city. The two things that will bring it the most attention from now on will be Veterans Park and the Community Center.”

Redevelopment funds were used to build the park, but some officials say not enough consideration was given to maintenance costs.

“What the city has done is build parks with redevelopment fund money and operate (them) with general fund money,” Smith said. “That’s like Rockefeller saying, ‘I’ll give you my $5-million yacht,’ but it costs you $2,000 a day to operate. You don’t want it, right? Well, that’s the same thing. We’re trying to operate these parks with a very limited amount of money (that) we can use from the general fund.”

Operations and maintenance costs in the parks budget amounted to $4.1 million in 1989, or about 56% of the $7.3 million the department spent. Special services and recreational programming, which includes salaries, accounted for $2.9 million.

Unlike many cities, which rely largely on part-time recreational staff, Carson has two full-time staff members in each of its 12 parks and in the boxing and aquatic centers. The most recent budget proposal would eliminate 80 full-time positions throughout the city, about half of which are now vacant. In the parks department, 18 full-time employees would be laid off, including one full-time staff member in each park facility.

City officials point out that each park had only one full-time staff member until 1988, when the city decided to convert 57 part-time employees, most of them in the parks department, to full-time status. The conversion cost the city $1.6 million in increased salaries and benefits, according to Yotsuya.

The proposed parks department staffing cuts have angered a large number of residents, many of whom have lambasted the council at a number of budget hearings since an advisory committee in September first suggested scaling back the department.

Many residents fear that a cut in recreation programs and staff would allow area gangs to take control of the city’s parks. They also note that the parks are almost the sole source of recreation and leisure activities in the city.

Tony Ysais, a volunteer at Carriage Crest Park, urged the council in September not to cut back on recreation employees, calling them “the ones that put kids in the right direction, the ones that keep the bad influence out.”

At a meeting last month, Joseph Walker, a longtime Carson resident, declared: “If you want to keep this city the way it is, then don’t mess with the parks.”

But several city officials say they do not plan to cut popular park programs and that residents have been deliberately misled by parks employees on some issues. They also say that residents’ appearances before the council have been orchestrated to create political pressure.

“My speculation is that it goes all the way to the top,” DeWitt said recently, referring to Homan. “Some of the outcry was (based on) information that the council had not even received yet. (Pressure tactics) used to work in the past, but not anymore. I think the council understands the seriousness of the city’s financial picture.”

Homan adamantly denied that park employees had prompted residents’ complaints.

“If (parks) staff members really wanted to orchestrate their public support, you would have seen thousands of people at these meetings,” Homan said.

The proposed 1990-91 budget is $29.45 million, almost as much as the $29.9 million the city actually spent last year. However, the city had to dip into reserves last year, and council members have said they are determined to hold spending in line with income this year.

The tentative budget sets aside $6.1 million for parks and recreation, compared to the $7.3 million the department spent in 1989-90. Smith points out the department would have spent even more last year if Veterans Park had been in operation.

Although council members generally agree that the parks department needs to sustain budget cuts, they disagree over the best way to go about that.

DeWitt and Councilwoman Sylvia Muise both say layoffs are necessary to balance the budget. But council members Juanita McDonald and Michael Mitoma oppose layoffs. Councilwoman Kay Calas has been noncommittal and was absent last week when the council split 2 to 2 in a vote on the proposed budget.

Even without the cost of maintenance and utilities, city officials say, Carson’s parks budget is still disproportionately higher than those of other Southland cities.

Area parks directors say such a comparison is difficult to draw because few cities have departmental structures similar to Carson’s.

However, in Lakewood, a city whose budget, population and departmental responsibilities closely resemble Carson’s, park expenses consume a far smaller proportion of the annual budget.

Lakewood’s 1990-91 city budget is about $26.6 million, of which $2.9 million, or 11%, is allotted to the Recreation and Community Services Department, according to city spokesman Don Waldie.

Whereas Carson spends $108.33 on a per capita basis for parks and community services, Lakewood spends $37.42.

The $2.9-million figure includes maintenance of all city buildings, landscaping, utilities and recreational staffing at 13 city parks, Waldie said. The number of full-time recreation employees in the parks varies, he said, but generally full-time workers are hired only for the summer.

In Carson, by contrast, there are 36 full-time recreation employees.

Whether the city can afford to retain that staffing level is one of the difficult budget issues that await the City Council at its next budget workshop on Tuesday. Whatever action the council ultimately decides to take, the decision is not likely to be an easy one.

“I grant you, I love everything we have,” DeWitt said, “but we have not been serious in looking at how we will maintain it. I think we’ve got to bite the bullet.”