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By KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Five dollars to park at Howarth Park.
Fundraisers and higher fees to keep city pools open.
And volunteers enlisted to help maintain city parks.
Of all the Santa Rosa city departments adjusting to the austere new budget, none was scrambling faster or proposing more controversial measures than the Recreation, Parks and Community Services Department.
A view of Lake Ralphine at Howarth Park
Facing a 12 percent drop in his budget, director Marc Richardson served up a host of ideas to raise additional revenue or save money to keep parks clean, pools open and summer programs running.
“It’s been quite a roller coaster within the department,” Richardson said.
The fee approved Thursday most likely to rile the public is the plan to begin charging people $5 to park at Howarth Park all day, and $2 for two hours. The fees would raise about $500,000 in expected revenue and fines beginning in early September.
Several council members acknowledged the public outcry likely will be fierce.
“We’re not looking forward to the public comments and the angst,” Mayor Susan Gorin said.
The plan calls for installing eight paying stations like those recently installed downtown, and hiring an additional parking enforcement officer to patrol the park. Parents dropping off or picking up kids from park programs would be exempt, Richardson said.
Fees for those programs are going up as well, by between 15 percent and 25 percent, he said.
The department is raising fees slightly for just about everything else the public uses its facilities for. Private groups renting the auditorium at the Finley Center will pay $95 instead of $90. Youth leagues will pay $5 per child per season, up from $4. And a family all-season pass for the city pools will jump from $235 to $300.
Council members expressed regret that people would have to pay more to use city facilities, and concern that it would further reduce usage.
“I’m just not wild about making it harder for the kids to participate,” Councilman Gary Wysocky said.
Richardson said he shared the concern, noting that fees on a popular city adult basketball program got so high that the league disbanded.
Overall, the fee increases are expected to raise a little more than $100,000.
But even with that increase, the operations of the pools remain in jeopardy. Even after efforts to increase their energy efficiency and raising $10,000 in donations from community groups, the department is still about $62,000 short, Richardson said.
To overcome that shortfall and keep the pools open, the city is planning a 5K run/walk fundraiser Aug. 29 to raise the difference. Gorin urged her fellow council members to reach out to their constituents and heavily promote the event.
She added that she’s been amazed that the public remains “totally clueless” about the challenges facing the parks, as evidenced by the increase in complaints about weeds, dry grass and garbage.
Richardson said he hopes to turn those complaints into action by helping people volunteer to clean their neighborhood parks. Councilwoman Jane Bender urged the installation of signs in the parks to explain to the public why they look so bad and how they can help.
“I think education is the key. I mean, they’re still not going to like it, but at least they’ll know what’s going on.”
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I’m saddened! I’m saddened by the consequences of our recession. I’m saddened by the degree to which underpaid public servants like our city council members are misleadingly blamed for these consequences. I’m saddened by the degree to which the Press Democrat promotes this, for example, by employing misleadingly sensationalist titles such as “Santa Rosa Plans to Reach Into Your Pockets.”
HANDOUT > ….when you run out of other peoples money, borrow from the “yet to be born”…see you later California.
I say we all start investing in cardboard, then we will all get rich when the bums come and set up shop in Santa Rosa! hahahahaha!!!
These are basic services that we pay with our taxes fire, police, and roads. However, the social programs do NOT generate any income and are a drain in resources. They need to cut those programs! If you cannot feed them, then don’t breed them. When you cut parks, police, and fire, why would I want to invest in your city? When you increase programs to keep welfare and homeless in the community, why would I want to live in your community? When you have nail salons and mobile phone kiosks in your downtown, why would I want to go to your city to shop? You offer nothing more than any of the thousands of strip-malls in the US.
Santa Rosa is becoming an extension of the east bay. It is sad to see the city slowly die at the hands of the council members with no business sense whatsoever. Spare me there are CPA’s on the board, that doesn’t mean anything but they know how to fill in the blanks on a form and add. There is no ingenuity and clear thinkers. If you don’t have good solid business sense, you cannot create jobs. If you don’t have jobs, you don’t have people consuming and spending money to keep those businesses alive…and when the business fails, more people are out of work. When you cut their salaries, they will not spend locally. When they stop spending another business will get the axe and this will continue. You need to spend money positively to make money. You need to reinvest it in the community and NOT send it abroad to places like “home” in Mexico. When less are employed, you will have less taxes to pay for general services. Bottom line, if your program does not increase the tax revenue base, then cut it. Parks definitely increase real estate value and considering that property tax funds the city, you best better protect the real estate. Make the city livable where people with money and jobs will want to move…not run from. The city needs a major overhaul in leadership. These clowns should retire and go to the circus and take Zane and Carrillo with them. They are destroying a once prosper great city and county which once was a great place to raise your family and visit. Now, it is like Hayward or Pinole…another East Bay dump. When the good people leave, the bad are left behind and bad move in. Along with them comes crime and “ghetto”. Minds as well merge with Vallejo.
It ma be that management salaries in the city are too high. I noticed that city council thinks nothing of forcing furloghs and cuts on people who make 40-70 k a year but there are plenty of administrators, and managers making 100-225 k a year. They are getting ready to hire a new manager at overblown salary now. Sorry that’s too much! They need to chop from the top! I don’t mind paying taxes for services but not to support bloated administrative salaries.
What about everyone working for Sonoma County that is making over 85,000 dollars a year take a 15% pay cut. Boom! Problems solved!
Beef King: Meg Whitman isn’t responsible for the Welfare to Work program. Bill Clinton is (and the Republicans).
From Wikipedia: “The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA, Pub.L. 104-193, 110 Stat. 2105, enacted August 22, 1996) is a United States federal law considered to be a fundamental shift in both the method and goal of federal cash assistance to the poor. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract With America and was introduced by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL-22) who believed welfare was partly responsible for bringing immigrants to the United States.[1]
Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we know it”.[2]
PRWORA instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) which became effective July 1, 1997. TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program which had been in effect since 1935 and also supplanted the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program of 1988. The law was heralded as a “reassertion of America’s work ethic” by the US Chamber of Commerce, largely in response to the bill’s workfare component. Some criticized the bill as a reinstitution of workhouses and believe the new system has been ineffective in getting people out of poverty. TANF was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.”
The program, part of the contract with America, got rid of AFDC but it didn’t get rid of people in need, and it hasn’t been sufficiently replaced so that we have a decent safety net in this country.
Scott P: A public servant is someone who is in public service. It does not imply sacrifice. Some of our public servants are police, fire[persons], mailmen, librarians, teachers, doctors and nurses, medical researchers, scientists, meteorologists, agricultural researchers, and many others. A lot of jobs are de facto public servants, such as all the people it takes to get food to us. people who work on the planning commission are public servants, people who inspect water quality food safety, people who try their best for us to have safe working conditions, all are public servants.
You say “Real “servants” would cut their pay and benefits to be 20% below the private sector. Budget problem solved!!!” You go ahead and tell all these people what you just posted. The budget problem is not the fault of public service workers. It’s due to the fact that we have gauged our economy on false premises, that monetary/economic growth will sustain the needs of our infrastructure. For that, we are all to blame, because we went along for the ride (well, not all of us did).
Funding schools with the lottery? Using property taxes, which rise and fall with the economy, to pay for our needed services? Counting on home values to always increase, corporate profits to always increase, the stock market to always increase, wages to always increase to follow all the other increases, is that good fiscal planning? We could have done something about it at any time, but we were happy to go along while things were good. Don’t blame public servants for such a massive f-up.
Todd: Maybe if the homeless shelters and rehab programs and social services weren’t being eliminated, the homeless wouldn’t invade Howarth Park. I think you might have a little more compassion, if not a deeper understanding of the issue.
Mad Dog: I get your grief about the parking thing. But I don’t think making them pay will disturb them into reality. They want more business downtown, and they consistently raise parking fees, which only deters most of us. Is it that they want downtown for rich people? That’s stupid. The rich people are already going to Sonoma and Healdsburg, where the shopping meccas are nicely laid out. They should make downtown SRO friendly to all of us, and they could start by eliminating parking fees. Reducing taxes always raises revenue.
I propose that we charge for EMPLOYEE parking at City Hall. If the City is going to nickle and dime us, then they can pay just the same. Let’s subject them to the same issues that they want to push on us!
I’m 27 years old, and I stopped going to howarth park, after all the homeless people invaded it
Dipping into your pockets to save the Pensions of Public Servants!
The major problem with the City, County, State and Federal Budget is not the parks or pools…It’s the salaries and benefits of our “public servants”.
Doesn’t being a public “servant” imply some sort of sacrifice? What sacrifice is made when they receive higher pay than the private sector; virtually no health care costs; a defined pension plan; take out 2, 3 or 4x in retirement what they put in; have virtually no chance to be fired; and many can show up late and go home early on a regular basis.
Real “servants” would cut their pay and benefits to be 20% below the private sector. Budget problem solved!!!
They’d also be incentivized to make government better with only 3 or 4 years of service rather than a lifetime of living off the public dole.
If you would like to know who rules Santa Rosa, Here’s a book for you:
“Who Rules Santa Rosa and Why it Matters” by J M Wilkinson.
It’s available at Copperfield’s Books 2316 Montgomery Dr, Santa Rosa.
Maybe the council could follow the lead of Meg Whitman and create a work for welfare program to maintain our parks. Everyone is a winner.
Santa Rosa has set aside a large percentage of tax payer dollars for social programs.
It’s important to remember that the underprivileged need parks too, and it makes sense to ask recipients of welfare checks to chip in a little elbow grease, instead of asking them to pay $5 to park their ride.
The real discrimination against the poor is the inclusion in revenue estimates the ‘fines’ that will be assessed against those who don’t or can’t pay, which of course is total bs.
Who’s in charge in Santa Rosa? It appears to be a city government out of control and lacking leadership.
What do people want the city to do? Neither is their sufficient support for the kind of wage and benefit reductions in public employee compensation to solve the budget problem, nor is there support for a tax increase to close the gap.
So . . . we get a grab bag combo of nuisance fees and service cutbacks.
I have little sympathy for politicians who promise much (pensions that pay 90%!) and worry not a whit about how it gets paid. But, since the public seems to buy their stick, what’s happening today is hardly surprising.
Selfish cheapskates? Hmm. Which City department do you work in? If we had a City Council that could actually balance a budget like we all have to do, none of this would be necessary.
How is it that they want to charge for parking at Howarth Park yet they have all sorts of money to play with at Old Courthouse Square?
Where are the people supposed to go to relax and play? I hope everyone parks on the streets and walks into the park. Don’t give the City so much as a dime to spend on some pet project.
I understand why they’re going this route, but it won’t change anything, really.
People will just park in the neighboring areas and walk in, especially people who visit the park several times a week with kids, walking/running groups, etc.
I’m sure they’ll see some increase in funds but unless the public sees those funds going to good use to improve the park and it’s offerings, park visitors will decline and money will still be an issue.
I think their best bet would be to sell an annual park access pass for a reasonable amount, just as the state does, so that people can pay a flat rate per year and go as much as they want. Those that want to pay as they go, could.
No problem with the Headline writer. Big problem with the people pushing the tax.
I agree. I am usually content with the PD’s writing, but this headline is very misleading.
Since a very small percentage of the public uses Howarth, it seems fair to charge admission into the park. However, if there is an entrance fee I think the pony rides + train rides must become free. Otherwise people will just look at the park as a sham. Basically you’d have to be dumb as an ox to charge people twice there. I’d suggest a $15 ticket and all the pony rides+train rides you can stomach. I guess the boat rides should still be a charge-for item.
Can we please get some professional writers at the PD? This headline is so inflammatory and exagerrated. The city is in dire straights and is resorting to charging for parking and you act as if they are robbing people. It’s headlines such as yours that add to cynicism mistrust and anti-government tea bag hyperbole and poison the political atmosphere. I don’t enjoy paying for parking either but if we didn’t have so many selfish cheapskates around who moan about paying taxes but still want to get parks and libraries and buses and schools for free, then we would afford to subsidize parks and parking! 5 Bucks is the cost of a hamburger or a pack of cigarrettes so stop complaining. If everyone paid their fair share in taxes we wouldn’t have to resort to these ridiculous fees and charges.
And can we get some news writers who know how to write a news headline and not advertising copy!?