Not Only the Poor Would Feel Sting of Park Closures

The dire money woes facing L.A. County government have come to this: Consuela Moreno is thinking of leaving her lifelong home because emergency medical care may end if officials go ahead and close County-USC Medical Center.

Johnny Canales, a retired truck driver who is addicted to the news, may not be able to visit his local county library in the South Bay to read newspapers and news magazines. With the threatened library closures, Canales is thinking of buying his first TV set to get the news. “Maybe it’s time, but I hate the thought of getting one of those damned things,” he says.

And on the Eastside, local activists intent on staging an Aug. 26 march to observe the 25th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium anti-war protest--where newsman Ruben Salazar died--may be hard-pressed to do so. County officials are reluctant to write off the $30,000 it would cost to have sheriff’s deputies patrol the event. “We shouldn’t have to pay to march on our own streets to mark an important event in Chicano history,” one of the organizers says.

The aforementioned effects of the $1.2-billion deficit facing the county, including the threatened closure of County-USC, are pretty drastic stuff. But when someone like Deborah Costello-Acosta, who is living rather comfortably, is afraid to go to her local county park-- that told me it’s really time to start worrying.

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When I met her the other day at Belvedere County Park in East L.A., I kept wondering why she kept looking around, as if she expected a gang of thugs to suddenly leap out at us. It wasn’t that, she explained.

“I’m afraid somebody’s going to walk up and say: ‘We’re closing the park. We have no more money. You’ll have to leave,’ ” she said. “I can imagine a lot of things, but I can’t imagine that happening here. Not here.”

With county officials talking of closing 30 parks to save 20% in the Parks and Recreation Department budget, she was apprehensive, this mother of three who grew up in Pico Rivera but now lives in Diamond Bar. She’s no welfare queen, no illegal immigrant draining county services, no bleeding-heart liberal. Costello-Acosta admits she lives a nice life and judging from her spacious four-bedroom home, I’d have to agree. Her lawyer husband and she earn a combined six-figure income.

In other words, the county’s problems wouldn’t seem to affect her.

“Wrong,” snapped the 44-year-old.

“I grew up with the parks,” Costello-Acosta explained. “My dad used to take us there all the time. We’d go to the city parks in Montebello or come here to Belvedere. Just being here brings back memories. Now that I’m married with my own kids, I make it a point to go the parks where I live. The Frank Bonelli Regional [County] Park [in San Dimas] is a wonderful place to take my children. We really like it. But now . . . you have to wonder if it’ll close.”

L.A. is a dangerous enough place for school-aged kids without further complicating the situation by closing recreational facilities, even for those who live in Diamond Bar, Costello-Acosta said.

“Gangs are everywhere,” she said. “Close the parks and that’s one less place my kids can go to to have fun and avoid negative influences. Sure I can go to other places and do other things to compensate. But when you start being afraid of going to your local park, then you have to stop and think about what’s going on. You really do.”

I wondered if she was overreacting, but her husband didn’t think so. “We were at Bonelli for a Sunday picnic,” William Acosta told me, “about three weeks ago. It was a nice day. There were a bunch of people near us having picnics too. Then we got to talking as we were borrowing mustard or lending some ice. Nothing bad happened. Nothing. But as we talked about them possibly closing the parks, we all got scared. I mean it, we were scared.

“You know what happened? Inside 15 minutes, we all left Bonelli Park. Just like that, we left. We haven’t been back since.”

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Costello-Acosta was still shaking her head about the abrupt exit from Bonelli as she munched on a tuna sandwich at Belvedere. Her kids, Bill Jr., 12, Debbie, 9, and Adam, 8, were roaming free at the park--which straddles the Pomona Freeway--while their mom was on the lookout.

“I really can’t explain this, but I’m afraid,” she said finally. “And it’s sad. I think the county wastes too much on poor people, on high salaries, on everything. But do they have to close the parks too? Maybe when they close the parks, I’ll refuse to leave.

“That’ll be something: ‘Diamond Bar woman arrested for refusing to leave a park.’ Has it come to this?”