Valley Interview : Parks Commission President Urges Residents to Help Out

Steven L. Soboroff, president of the Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Parks Commissioners, has pledged to visit every park in the city with the appropriate member of City Council in tow. One of his latest visits--his 74th--was to Studio City Park in the San Fernando Valley, the area where he spent part of his childhood.

The developer and father of four has headed the Parks Commission since August. He also co-chairs Progress LA, a nonprofit organization advising the mayor on making Los Angeles more construction-friendly, and is the president of the board of directors of the Big Brothers Assn. of Greater Los Angeles.

Thumbing through the 15 blue binders in which he has organized information on all of L.A.’s park facilities, Soboroff called his position “the best citizen job in L.A.” and said that developing the parks to better serve residents “tugs at your same heartstrings” as his work with the Big Brothers Assn.

“But” he said, “I am not in this job to make friends. I am trying to help the mayor save the city.”

Question: You have issued a call to arms of sorts, asking that communities take responsibility for maintaining and improving their parks . What, specifically, can residents do to make their parks better places?

Answer: Start a program. Be a coach. Teach a music class. Yesterday I was with Councilman Marvin Braude at a park where they have seniors’ classes for people just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We were in a big hurry, rushing in and out, and we walked into this room where there were 40 people, all singing a song. It was so moving. That one experience was for me such a broadening of what the word “recreation” means. Watching these people sing a song, it was the same in some way as watching a group of kids play soccer or the high school kids after school playing basketball. It is all the same. This is recreation. It keeps these people going. And this program was handled by one resident who just decided to do it.

Q: How do residents go about doing something like that? Whom would they contact?

A: The directors of the park. Go over to the park and say, “I have an idea for a program. I would like head a program. I would like to participate in a program, and that program is chess, or that program is knitting, or it is basketball or street hockey.” The reason I think most people don’t do that is because they don’t think they are needed or that their ideas can become reality. But they can. They definitely can. It has happened over and over.

Q: As you have pointed out, close to one-third of L . A . ‘s parks are in the San Fernando Valley. What specific challenges do Valley parks face?

A. They are larger, which on one hand is a blessing. But it is a mixed blessing. Because they are large, there are more security and maintenance issues to contend with. They are more expensive to run. And there are parks located in neighborhoods where they don’t want parks. They are so exclusive, they don’t want the public coming in to use a park. In those cases, I would rather sell that parkland to those people. Let them build another house on it. Then use those funds to put a park in the Valley where we need parks. There are a lot of Valley districts that need parks very badly.

Q: Aren’t those areas with dire need for park and recreation facilities also the areas with the most serious security issues?

A: There are problems and great things happening in every single park in L.A. And this is just one more reason why community involvement is a must. I’ll tell you, you can take five gang members and three police officers and the mother of one of the gang members, and I believe that one mother will handle those five boys better than those three police officers could. So, in large part, I don’t believe it is a hard kind of security issue.

Also, there is a phenomenon happening in our city: Gang members are having children. And those children want to go play football and basketball, and the parents are asking themselves, “What kind of environment do I want my kid to play in?” And in droves, they are breaking away from the gangs. And we bring them into these parks. We let these guys run programs, teach basketball, be coaches. They need a place to do that. And these activities, this outlet, is more effective than surrounding them with police.

Q: You have said that you are angered by constant police and park ranger reports of unacceptable behavior. What specifically are you talking about, and what can citizens do to stop it?

A: Yes, I am angered. I may have been better off using the word disappointed, but when I see graffiti on the wall at one of our facilities, it makes me angry. I don’t like visiting a park and seeing needles sticking out of the grass, or equipment broken or stolen. These are the things that are disturbing to me.

But there are solutions. In the Valley, already, there are stories of the community, the neighborhood, wresting their park back from drug dealers. Not the police. Not the National Guard. But the community. That is the answer, right there.

Q: What, specifically, can a single citizen or family do to prevent or counteract crime in their parks?

A: Neighbors could organize a Sunday morning clean-up detail, though we try to maintain the parks well. I used to go out with the Cub Scouts and sand down the benches and repaint them. Basically, whatever it is that people are motivated to do, in whatever way they are able to give of their services, there is some way for them to be used.

Q: You have said that there isn’t nearly enough money or staff to allow our children and other citizens to get what they need from our park system.

A: There isn’t enough, not in any city, whether it is Beverly Hills or Pacoima. If the people don’t care about taking care of their own community, their own children, if they don’t see to it themselves that they get the programs and facilities they need, there is no agency, no outside influence that can give that to them.

Q: What are you doing to operate better on a tight budget, and what can citizens do to get what they need from a lean system?

A: What I can do is to make sure that we are run efficiently. For example, certain facilities may not be used all the time, like the basketball courts during the day while kids are in school. What other types of programs can we run there then? We need to become consistent in our activity levels, getting rid of those peaks and valleys.

On the citizen side, we need neighborhood input in order to do this effectively. What do they need? What is offered that they would attend if only it were at a different time? And we need volunteers. Of course we are too short-staffed to do everything everyone needs or wants. But if residents volunteer to accomplish things that are important to them or their communities, just about anything is possible, regardless of the city budget.

Q: You are calling on the private sector to assume more responsibility for the community’s recreation facilities. Do you think that government needs to be relieved of that responsibility?

A: I think the private sector has a lot to benefit by participating, but I don’t believe that the parks should be controlled privately. The private sector has an integral role in filling wish lists in neighborhood after neighborhood, whether it is buying ballet equipment or fixing the swings.

And when we ask people to give to the city for playgrounds and parks, it doesn’t have to come out of their philanthropic budget. It can come out of their advertising and promotion budget. We can give people cluck for their buck. God willing, someone reading this article says, “I want to build a children’s playground in my neighborhood, and call it whatever, or say it was a gift from this.” We can do that. If someone wants to put new basketball hoops up, or build some chess or checkers tables, if they want to improve their neighborhood park financially, we can and will go around the entire bureaucratic process, as long as it is up to codes, to get immediate installation.

Q: We are nearing the one-year anniversary of the Northridge quake. Have the parks had any special role or needs in the rebuilding of the city over the last year?

A: Obviously, immediately after the earthquake, the parks were an integral part of the healing process and the emergency progress. Our people worked 24 hours a day, creating places for people to go, safe places. Certainly they were instrumental in the sanity of people after such a horrifying experience.

Future-wise, I would consider earthquake training classes to be as important recreationally as anything else we may promote at our facilities.