April 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 56

F i scal B l u es
lives better. That's all. We make communities better.
" That hasn't diminished the needs out in the community, which are probably greater than ever, " he
says. " You're looking at a 14 to 15 percent unemployment rate and people need rec and parks now more
than ever-open space, where kids can go somewhere safe. "
L.A.'s recreation and parks department is also
studying a number of partnerships with other agencies and nonprofits that also a few years ago they
would not have considered. Driving this trend is competition for shrinking funding from foundations that
traditionally supported park and recreation efforts.
In meeting with 501(c)(3) foundations, Mukri has
learned that they've been hit just as hard as the entities they fund. " What they're telling me is the majority of 501(c)(3)s have less than three months operating
capital. So we're going to have to figure a way to leverage public/private partnerships. "
Mukri believes the recently opened Lafayette Center in the Rampart District may be just the template

for going forward. In 2006, Mukri met with the nonprofit Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) to evaluate the viability of renovating and expanding this $9.8 million,
15,000-square-foot campus. HOLA has been providing
an array of after-school programs in academics, arts,
and athletics for inner-city residents. At first, the relationship was a struggle that required the public agency and the private nonprofit to put aside their egos in
order to develop synergies. As HOLA President Tony
Brown says, " There wasn't a template for this type of
partnership, which had to be built from the ground up. "

Charleston, South Carolina
Not every agency director sees the problems besetting parks and recreation purely in terms of the
economy. Rather, it's a dependence on government
funding that has been exposed by the recession's
ravages. Tom O'Rourke, executive director, Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission, has
steered a course away from reliance primarily on
tax revenues.

Sustainable Services
Two cities find ways to maintain services in the face of shrinking budgets.

fter four rounds of layoffs
in three years, Bill Smith, CPRP,
director of Community Services
in Colton, California, had to draw the line.
" I was always brought up in the parks
and rec world that anytime you have to
make cuts, you try to do so in such a way
that it's a minimal impact to the citizens, "
Smith explains. " Sometimes you can't
save services. If you just make cuts everywhere else and continue to offer the same
level of service, you're going to have less
people doing it, morale's going to stink,
and you're not going to be able to do it
as well. "
Faced with the loss of yet another fulltime employee, Smith discovered that
would leave a city aquatics facility without any full time supervision. " We do
have plenty of part-time seasonal lifeguarding staff, but you still need to have
that full-time person who's a certified
AFO [aquatic facility operator] who oversees the program. Liability-wise, aquatics

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Apr i l 2 0 1 1

is about the most exposed thing that we
do, so you can't staff it with folks who
don't have that expertise. "
With that, Smith realized that further
budget reductions must come with service level impacts, despite his instinct to
" save all programs at all costs. " But when
he asked the city manager to convey back
to the city council that the aquatics facility would have to close, something remarkable happened. The city council
restored much of the department's funding, later laying off police officers instead.
" I think it's newsworthy any time police
officers get laid off and nobody in community services does, " Smith marvels.
" The bottom line, as we have learned, is
that if your administration thinks they can
reduce your budget without consequences to services, they will. "
In El Paso, Texas, Assistant Parks and
Recreation Director Joel McKnight, CPRP,
faced an increasingly common scenario
for municipal park agencies-merger with

www.NRPA .ORG

another city agency. In September 2010,
150 operations and maintenance park
staff were separated from the recreation
staff and merged with General Services
(public works).
" Of course, every one of us were holding our breath! " exclaims McKnight, who is
now the deputy director of General Services. He explains that the city's mind set was
that the two departments had the same
basic goal and mission of providing maintenance services and that the El Paso General Services department had a known track
record for efficiency. McKnight notes that
park agencies in general have not advocated strongly enough for maintenance over
the past several years and few upper-level
directors have a maintenance background.
" Although it was separation and it was
change, it's turned out to be very good for
us, " McKnight says. " Two things we noticed from the very beginning were that
we were better able to leverage both funds
and services that the other department

April 2011 - Parks & Recreation

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