6 Finalists Vie to Head L.A.’s Parks Department : Recreation: New general manager will run $96-million-a-year agency. Decision is expected sometime in January.

City officials on Friday announced six finalists--including the state’s parks director and a parks official from Texas--to replace James Hadaway as general manager of Los Angeles’ $96-million-a-year Department of Recreation and Parks.

The Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners is expected to make a final selection sometime in January, when Hadaway, 62, is scheduled to retire after 16 years with the department.

The finalists include Henry Agonia, director of the state Department of Parks and Recreation; Manuel Mollinedo, director of Parks and Recreation for the city of Austin, Tex.; and Herbye White, director of the Office of Parks and Recreation for the city of Oakland.

Local candidates are Sheldon Jensen and Jacquelyn Tatum, both assistant general managers of Recreation and Parks in Los Angeles, and John Weber, assistant director of Parks and Recreation for Los Angeles County.

“It’s a very highly qualified group of people,” said Phil Henning, assistant general manager of the city’s Personnel Department. “But the job of general manager of Recreation and Parks in Los Angeles is a real challenge.”

The job carries an annual salary of $116,448 to $174,640, city officials said.

The department manages 2,194 full-time employees, 350 parks--many of them plagued by gangs--287 tennis courts, 150 recreation centers, 92 miles of hiking trails, 19 licensed child care centers, nine museums and the Los Angeles Zoo.

Beyond that, “achieving a balance between providing public service and finding the money to do it is going to be especially hard amid the current budget crisis.”

City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the city’s Budget and Finance Committee, said recently revised forecasts have estimated that the city’s revenues for fiscal year 1991-92 may be more than $100 million below what had been previously predicted.