By Stela Khury
Sacramento Bee
Sacramento has more parks than it used to, but those parks are less well tended.
Total park acreage in Sacramento has nearly quadrupled in the last 30 years. At the same time, the number of employees responsible for cleaning bathrooms, mowing lawns, emptying garbage cans and performing other maintenance tasks has dropped more than 15 percent, according to city data.
A status report from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation – prepared for Tuesday’s City Council meeting – shows that the city’s maintenance staff remains depleted from years of budget cuts, despite the restoration of some of that money after the 2012 passage of Measure U, a temporary tax hike. Unless a new funding source is identified, the department warns that service levels will fall further as the city continues to open new parks.
In 1980, the department employed one maintenance employee for each 5.4 acres of park land, data shows. In 2016, that figure will be one employee per 23 acres.