37-Year Employee Appointed Head of City Parks Department : Government: Jackie Tatum becomes first woman to head the agency. She started career as a $1.50-an-hour recreation center assistant.

Jackie Tatum, who started with the city as a $1.50-an-hour recreation center assistant, on Friday was named head of the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, the first woman to hold the position.

Tatum, 59, will earn $129,519 a year as general manager, a post she formally assumes April 8.

The biggest challenge before the department will be to stay afloat financially, Tatum told a City Hall press conference attended by Mayor Tom Bradley and J. Stanley Sanders, president of the Recreation and Parks Commission. Tatum said she would be reluctant to raise fees for golf courses and other park attractions, but plans to enlist corporate donors to improve facilities and programs.

Tatum, an employee of the department for 37 years, had been assistant general manager of the San Fernando Valley region for the last three years.

“When the floods descended upon the Sepulveda flood basin this week, Jackie Tatum directed much of the response to this emergency and was responsible for ensuring that the damage to recreation and parks facilities was as minimized as possible,” Bradley said.

The mayor said he had not played a role in Tatum’s selection, which was made Wednesday in a closed-door commission meeting.

As she takes over for retiring General Manager James E. Hadaway, Tatum will be responsible for 350 city parks, 150 recreation centers, 2,000 employees and a $96-million annual budget.

A graduate of USC, Tatum is the fourth person to lead the department since it was formed in 1947. She was first hired in 1955 as a recreation center assistant. As she was promoted to a variety of supervisory positions, she also won awards, among them a 1980 special Bicentennial Recognition Award for advancing to the highest position held by a black woman in the department.

Tatum helped create the department’s Festival in Black Programs, held annually in MacArthur Park.

She plans “tapping corporate and philanthropic donors” to fund programs similar to the eight “Pepsi Play Parks” donated by PepsiCo Inc. She would try to interest a baby-food manufacturer, she said, in sponsoring day-care programs at city recreation centers.

Tatum was selected over four other finalists--park agency heads from Oakland, Toronto and Austin, Tex., and a fellow assistant general manager within the parks department, Sheldon Jensen.

She takes over at a time when the department’s zoo is in transition with a new director, Mark Goldstein, after publicized controversies over its management and animal care.

The department has also been criticized in recent years for its handling of such major concessions as the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank and the Sepulveda Basin miniature golf complex.

City Councilmen Mike Hernandez and Zev Yaroslavsky have asked city staff to review the concession contracts, and Joel Wachs, head of the council committee overseeing the matter, has also been a frequent critic of the agency.

Although Wachs called Tatum “personable” and hailed her appointment to the post, he added: “I have found it to be a department with a lot of trouble, a lot of management problems. . . . I think it needs a thorough overhaul.”