Park ranger role to shift

CITY HALL — The city’s park rangers will be stripped of their law enforcement duties and peace officer status, according to a contentious proposal unanimously approved by the City Council at a Tuesday budget study session.

The change converts the city’s two full-time rangers to focus entirely on naturalist programming, George Chapjian, director of Parks, Recreation and Community Services, said at a City Council budget study session last week. Two other ranger positions, which were vacant for more than two years, were eliminated earlier this year as a part of budget cuts.

“Personally I don’t think they’ve done a really good job of [enforcement] because of the resources,” Chapjian said Thursday, noting that maintaining law and order at 39 parks and 5,000 acres of open space is too much for only two people. Glendale police already respond to 80% of all emergency calls in parks, he said.

The rangers could be more useful to the community if they focused entirely on education and preservation activities, such as nature hikes, campground programs, trail maintenance and school programs, among other duties, he added. They will still patrol park areas and open spaces and have the ability to issue warnings and citations for noncompliance of local park regulations.

Council members had said they would not endorse the change until they saw a detailed impact report from Chapjian, which he presented Tuesday, along with an alternative of folding at least one ranger into the Glendale Police Department to retain peace officer status, but that option gained little traction.

“Hopefully this is going to work out for the best,” Mayor Frank Quintero said. “The police absolutely have to pay more attention to the urban parks. They know this.”

Assistant Police Chief Ron De Pompa said last week that police already routinely patrol parks, and that they already respond to “the lion’s share” of emergency park calls. But he warned the council that any stepped-up enforcement would be a “real problem” for an already strapped Police Department, which is also under budget-cutting pressure.

On Tuesday, Chapjian said the police had agreed to cover the 20% of calls currently covered by the rangers since most of them come through 911 dispatch, he said.

Chapjian told the council Tuesday that the three part-time rangers, who work a total of 1,000 hours a year, would remain and focus on naturalist programming.

John Diaz, president of the Glendale Park Ranger Assn., disputed Chapjian’s plan, saying the part-time rangers were told by Chapjian in April that they would be eliminated by July 1 as a part of the change.

“The facts are the rangers supplement the police more than is being said,” he said. “If the City Council wants us to do any enforcement, they need to give us our firearms back.”

The program shift would also result in lower salaries for the two ranger positions for whoever eventually takes over those posts in the future, said Human Resources Director Matt Doyle.

Tammi Relyea, a member of the Northwest Glendale Homeowner Assn. Board of Directors who fought hard to have an increased ranger presence at Brand Park, said the change was concerning, citing the June 2007 non-injury drive-by shooting at Brand Park.

“I do see how instrumental the park rangers can be, particularly for Brand Park because it is so secluded and hard to patrol from the street,” she said. “The community feels much more secure knowing the park rangers are there.”

Richard Toyon, president of VOICE, a foothill-based environmental group, said peace officer status was especially important to help rangers in the case of emergencies in open-space areas that may take the police extra time to get to.

“I’m glad at the very least they are there for recreational purposes,” he said. “But I think they are invaluable for both recreational purposes and peace officer status.”

But City Council members, under pressure to cut costs at every corner, expressed support for reassigning the rangers to spend more time in the open space areas, like Deukmejian Wilderness Park, where they’re headquarters are located.

“I think this will get the rangers in the parks more than they are now,” Councilwoman Laura Friedman said.