Parks funding: Is it in the budget?

Earlier this year, Our Culver shared a budget survey with the community. In the survey, we described various city departments and then asked if each department should get more money, the same amount of money, or less money in the budget.

54% of respondents agreed that the Parks department should get more money.

For many folks who live in multi-unit housing, Culver City's parks are the closest thing they have to a backyard. And even for those who have their own yards, city parks and recreation facilities are where they swim, where their kids play soccer or baseball, or where seniors go to connect with friends. The large number of survey respondents stating that Parks, Recreation, and Community Services (PRCS) needs more money reflects the poor state of our parks.

In a recent social media discussion, residents noted that our ballfields are at capacity, with no lights to play at night, and the bathrooms are gross. One commenter summed it up: “Our parks facilities are embarrassing.”

We need more staff to fund and fix our parks, but The draft budget says “No!”

The PRCS department made an extremely important budget request that would help the city renovate its parks — a senior management analyst — but it was not funded in the draft budget. You might be asking why such a boring-sounding position is so important. This position primarily focuses on fundraising and applying for grants to fix our parks. This would mean PRCS could implement much-needed improvements to our parks without raising our taxes, park fees, or passing a bond.

As you might remember, last year, the city went through a process of collecting information on what is currently in the parks and how to improve them to create the Parks Master Plan – a document that is supposed to guide improvements to the parks. The Parks Master Plan highlighted the same issues that Culver City residents have, namely that the parks are underfunded. The Plan notes that:

“Sufficient funding and availability for staff for the parks system is limited. The current staff is stretched to capacity … Currently, the parks demonstrate overstressed budgets and overstretched staff.”

This underfunding has created a vicious cycle: the PRCS department does not have capacity to apply for grants and other funding that would improve our parks. Our parks deteriorate and we spend more on repairs, leaving less money for staff to apply for funding to improve our parks, and so on. Further, by not applying for grants, our city has been leaving money on the table for lack of staff.

And it’s not just about funding, either — the current staff only has the capacity to manage something like one playground renovation per year. Forget about multiple projects per year or projects with a bigger scale.

The city needs to hear from you: Prioritize parks funding!

Without increasing the senior Parks Department staff, improvements will continue to get kicked down the road, leading to further deterioration of our parks and increased costs when we finally make repairs. Yet when the city created its draft budget it refused to fund a position that will raise money for the city!

The city cannot implement the Parks Master Plan or any real improvement to our parks without more money. The city is about at its limit for taxes it can raise and no one wants a new bond. We must find other sources of funding or we might as well throw our Parks Master Plan in the trash.

The good news is that Vice Mayor Freddy Puza and Councilmembers Bubba Fish and Yasmine-Imani McMorrin have all expressed support for funding this position. But it’s clear they need to hear more residents demanding funding for parks, or the parks staff position might be left unfunded.

Stay tuned for more from Our Culver on opportunities to let your voice be heard in the budget process.