Funding Reinstated for Unwanted Parks

Despite questioning the work of officials charged with turning over several county parks to local cities, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted to resume funding the parks.

“It doesn’t seem like there has been a real assertive approach to this,” Supervisor Gloria Molina told Rodney E. Cooper, director of the Department of Regional Parks and Recreation. “It just seems, guys, that you are not presenting a real good marketing plan here.”

Since last summer, the county parks department has been attempting to give nine county parks to the cities in which they are located: Crescenta Valley Park in Glendale, El Cariso and Veterans Memorial parks in Sylmar, Apollo Park in Lancaster, Jesse Owens Park in Los Angeles, La Mirada Park in La Mirada, Arcadia Park in Arcadia, Victoria Park in Carson and Cerritos Regional Park in Cerritos.

The Board of Supervisors and the parks department were originally so confident that the county would find takers that the supervisors wrote the money to operate four of the parks--$1.8 million--out of the current fiscal year’s budget.

But although the county offered to hand over the parks for free, the cost of maintaining them would have averaged $450,000 annually--too expensive, most city officials said.

Further hampering the parks department’s effort was the county’s refusal to surrender tax revenues or give up such lucrative programs as golf courses to help the cities meet the cost of operating the parks.

Of the seven cities approached by the county, only La Mirada and Cerritos are continuing negotiations.

On Tuesday, the board unanimously agreed to continue paying to operate the parks, but questioned the efforts of the parks department to unload them.

When Cooper told Molina that the department had not courted local city council members in order to persuade them to take the parks, Molina responded: “I think it might be worthwhile to pursue some [other] strategies . . . but it is meaningless if there’s no political will to do this.”