Help rescue Sacramento Parks

We are with the Land Park Community Association and we are tremendously concerned with the terrible impact that the City’s proposed layoff of 50% of the city’s park maintenance workers will have on city parks. Under the City Manager’s budget, 100 full-time park workers and dozens more seasonal and part-time workers will be dismissed.

As you may have seen in a Bee article last Thursday, the proposed cuts, if adopted, would make our parks largely unusable. According to City staff, the cuts will lead to

(1) Reducing now weekly mowing to once every two to three weeks;
(2) Emptying park trash cans once or twice a week from the current daily emptying of cans; and
(3) Closing all park restrooms except for special events.

Park garbage cans will be overflowing much of the time, with garbage strewn throughout our parks. The lack of regular mowing during summer months will make it unsanitary and unsafe for families to hold picnics or children to play baseball or soccer. Our parks will look more like the front yards of some foreclosed homes than parks that Sacramento’s families can use and enjoy. The closure of park restrooms will be a public health disaster that will impact not only the parks and its users, but adjoining residents and businesses as well.

We did not feel that we could sit idly by and let our parks become ruined. We believe that if the City Council makes intelligent budget choices, even in this bad budget year, our parks can be saved from ruin. Our “Park Budget Working Group” has been studying the issue in cooperation with City staff and has several sound ideas for spending reforms. We are also certain that others also have excellent ideas for resolving the funding crisis in ways that do not bring ruin to our parks.

But we are just one neighborhood group among many. To protect our parks from this threat, we firmly believe that we all need to unite into a coalition of neighborhoods and citizens to make the strongest possible case to the City Council for changing the City’s spending priorities to protect basic, park maintenance funding. If we are united, they will have no choice but to listen to us. It falls to us, as neighborhood leaders, to lead this campaign.

We are putting out a call to Sacramento’s neighborhood and community leaders, concerned citizens, park users and other friends of local parks to join us at an urgent strategy session on how we can rescue our parks from the coming disaster. The parks strategy session will be this Thursday, May 14th at 6:00 p.m. at Eskaton Monroe Lodge at 3225 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95818.

This is short notice, but the City Manager released his proposed budget just last week and the City Council is holding its public hearing on the budget just a week from tomorrow, at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 19th. For our voices to be heard, we must act swiftly to rescue Sacramento’s parks. If you have any questions, leave comments and email addresses. We hope to see you on Thursday night. And we encourage you to bring friends and neighbors along who may have interest in lending support to the effort.

Sac Bee article: Park maintenance would suffer under Sacramento city budget ...

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