It’s been said many times before.
In Los Angeles, for many people, the neighborhood park is their frontyard and backyard.
It’s where tables are staked out early and birthdays are celebrated.
It’s where kids learn how to swim and all ages play soccer, baseball and basketball.
It’s where neighbors gather to beat the heat, hike, catch a concert, slow down, escape the madness.
But as I said in my last column, L.A.’s roughly 500 parks and 100 rec centers, occupying 16,000 acres, are generally in bad shape and not easily accessible to many residents. In fact, in the latest annual ranking by the Trust for Public Land, they fell to 90th out of the 100 largest recreation and parks systems in the nation on the basis of access, acreage, amenities, investment and equity.
That’s shameful and inexcusable, especially for a city prepping to host World Cup soccer championships and the Olympics. But in every corner of Los Angeles, residents now have a chance to weigh in on what they like or don’t like about parks, what went wrong and what to do about it.
A months-long study, commissioned by the city and compiled by landscape design company OLIN with input from multiple urban planners, community groups and thousands of residents, was posted online Tuesday, explaining the long history of decline and laying out strategies for turning things around.
Residents have 45 days to weigh in online or at community meetings (details below). The final report will be delivered to the recreation and parks board of commissioners and then, in a perfect world, someone at City Hall will lead the way and restore pride in an essential but neglected community asset.
Among the key findings of the nearly 500-page needs-assessment study:
Fewer than half of survey respondents said there are enough parks and rec centers within walking distance of their homes.
Fewer than 40% said parks are in either excellent or good condition.
L.A. invests less per capita in parks ($92 annually) than many other large cities, including Chicago ($182), Dallas ($232), Washington, D.C. ($407) and San Francisco ($583).
The department’s maintenance and operations budget has been stagnant for years and its staff has been shrinking, with more trouble on the horizon as temporary funding sources dry up in the next few years.
Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents would support a bond, tax or levy for additional funding.
“I think it validated what we already knew,” Department of Recreation and Parks general manager Jimmy Kim said of the needs assessment study, adding that it provided a framework for making smarter use of existing resources while going after new sources of revenue. “My message to Los Angeles [is] please participate in this process.”
Kim told me last week that the current workforce is half what it once was, and basic park maintenance is like a “game of whack-a-mole.” The department’s budget has grown in the last 15 years, but lagged way behind growth of the citywide budget. In that time, it’s been hit by inflation, the citywide budget deficit and the rising cost of maintaining aging facilities (the deferred maintenance tab is greater than $2 billion).
The department is also hamstrung by a Charter-mandated, per-capita funding formula that hasn’t been tweaked since the 1930s. And because it’s a proprietary department, meaning that it raises some money through programs and concessions, it’s required to pay its own utility bills and reimburse the city for employee benefits, two expenses that swallow 40% of its budget.
“For the last century,” said Jessica Henson, of OLIN, “the same percentage of the city budget has been allocated to parks, but they’re doing a lot more today, and are on the front lines of so many critical public services like COVID response and fire response. They’re doing more with less over the last 15 years.”
In my last column, I laid out one of the easiest and quickest ways to add more park space — unlock the gates of L.A. Unified schoolyards. Ten have been opened so far, and a new agreement between the city and school district paves the way for more, although two major obstacles are funding and the need to replace blacktop with greenery.
To calculate how to make better use of existing resources, the study used an approach developed in part by UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. The PerSquareMile tool broke the city into tiny grids and identified two dozen park sites where improved facilities could impact the largest number of people, and three dozen sites where conversion of schools and other public spaces into parks would serve hundreds of thousands of people.
“It’s the greatest good for the greatest number of people in the most efficient way,” said Jon Christensen, of the UCLA institute.
But transforming the system will take more than that, said Guillermo Rodriguez, a member of the study’s steering committee and California state director of the Trust for Public Land, the nonprofit that ranked L.A. near the bottom of the 100 largest park systems.
“Cities have made investments across the board, and L.A. is lagging,” Rodriguez said.
The study cited several revenue-generating options, including a charter amendment to increase the percentage of funding that goes to parks, expanded nonprofit partnerships, extending Proposition K, the 1996 park improvement measure that is about to expire, and putting a new fundraising initiative on the ballot in the fall of 2026.
“In every administration since [Mayor] Tom Bradley, the park system was taken for granted,” Rodriguez said. “There’s no more tape, no more paint, no more magic tricks that they can use to fix the parks. It really requires leadership and a significant investment, and I think Angelenos are ready to step up.”
That leadership is going to have to come from Mayor Karen Bass and each member of the City Council. So if you’d like to get their attention, two public meetings are coming up:
Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Bellevue Recreation Center in Silver Lake, and Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon at the Westwood Recreation Center.
For a schedule of future virtual meetings, and to read an online copy of the needs assessment study, go to needs.parks.lacity.gov.
steve.lopez@latimes.com
