Be sure to clean the restrooms

It was sad, but entirely predictable, to find an article in the Glendale News-Press reporting on a reduction in staffing that will likely result in our parks beginning to “look a little ratty,” as Glendale’s parks services administrator conceded (“City official expects local parks to ‘look a little ratty’,” Oct. 21).

We can expect more articles like this one telling of reductions in the quality of life in our community as long as our state legislature continues to be unwilling or unable to increase state revenues. Even a petroleum extraction fee is off the table, despite the fact that every other oil-producing state, including Alaska, has one.

So the California debt problem continues to trickle down to the local level, where we can really feel it. It’s a shame we must reduce care of our parks when they are becoming ever more important as a refuge for people who don’t have much discretionary income to spend on recreation.

Nevertheless, I am grateful for Parks Services Administrator Gary Marello’s promise to exempt bathroom maintenance and litter pick-up from this reduction in service. I fervently hope this promise is kept.

If you must, Mr. Marello, let the grass grow a little taller, the leaves remain unblown, and the trees go untrimmed, but nothing is more offensive in parks than unsightly trash and foul restrooms.

Gerry Rankin

Glendale