County Parks Teeter On Financial Edge

Spokane County parks are headed for a crisis.

Pools are leaking.

Playground equipment is crumbling.

Restrooms are closed.

A building is sinking.

The list goes on, with repairs or new equipment needed at nearly every park.

Those are symptoms of the real problem: The parks department does not get enough money to meet its needs.

“The budget (for maintenance) has been cut every year since 1989,” said Parks Director Sam Angove. “It’s about 40 percent less, if you take into account for inflation.”

The county shut down 30 parks under similar conditions in the mid-1980s. If the budget doesn’t increase soon, Angove said he’ll start closing parks again within three years.

“And I’m being optimistic,” he said. “If I were realistic, I’d say two years.”

Angove’s $1.1 million budget this year is slightly more than 1 percent of the county’s budget. Even though tax revenues are increasing, county commissioners say they can’t guarantee parks a larger slice of the county’s budget, as a citizens advisory committee has asked.

More money for parks would mean less money for law enforcement, which consumes about 70 percent of the county budget.

“In this day and age, people are always going to be crying for more police protection,” said Sally Reynolds, who campaigned for a 1987 parks bond issue that temporarily solved the previous crisis.

The solution must come from voters, and must be different than anything tried before.

Here are the possibilities:

Under the freeholders’ proposal to combine city and county government, parks would be guaranteed 8 percent of the budget. That’s the same slice the city gives its parks.

Voters could separate parks from the rest of county government by forming a parks district that would have its own taxing authority and its own commissioners.

Voters could pay for parks in their own neighborhoods using the three parks service areas established in 1981 but not yet put to use.

Taxpayers’ burdens would vary depending on the quality of parks in their areas.

County commissioners say they like the idea of service areas because it makes voters responsible for the parks they use.

But Commissioner Steve Hasson, for one, thinks voters want less government, not more.

“So how in the world do you sell a parks service district, which a lot of people are going to see as another layer of government?”

Angove has his doubts, as well. “Nobody has come to my office to say they would campaign for (service areas),” he said.

If all those solutions fail, Commissioner Pat Mummey said, she’d suggest putting a bond issue on the ballot.

A bond wouldn’t solve long-term money problems, but it would keep the parks open and pay for needed improvements.

“We’ve got to do something to solve the deterioration of the parks, and if you can’t do it through governance, then you’ve got to keep doing these BandAid approaches,” Mummey said.

The $2.2 million voters approved in 1987 paid for new playground equipment, restrooms, sprinkler systems and other improvements.

With that money and neighborhood donations, the number of parks has rebounded to 24.

The money was well-spent, said Angove.

But it’s long since gone.

County pools are the most visible sign that the parks are deteriorating.

County commissioners in April said they would close three of the four pools rather than spend $500,000 on repairs.

They relented amid a storm of public rage, when engineers found ways to stop the leaks for about $150,000.

The pools need about $300,000 more work.

“Pools are just the beginning,” said Angove.

The sinking Valley Mission Park senior center is one of the parks department’s more pressing problems.

About 2,000 seniors use the building each week for bingo, billiards, dances and other activities.

The center is sinking into the old landfill beneath it.

The basement floor slopes 11 inches in 20 feet. A jagged crack in the foundation is an inch wide and spreads a little more each year.

The shifting building has shattered its own sewer line three times in eight years.

“At some point in time, this building’s going to be condemned,” said Angove.

Valley Rotarians spent $300,000 building the center in 1976. Replacing it would cost at least $1 million.

Smaller problems plague nearly every park. A few examples:

Swings, slides and other playground equipment were removed from six parks this year and last.

Orchard Avenue, Playwood and Bear Lake parks have no playground equipment.

“They were all wooden structures that had started to rot,” said Parks Manager Wyn Birkenthal.

Newer playground equipment, bought with money from the bond issue, doesn’t meet federal standards, putting taxpayers at risk of a lawsuit if someone gets hurt.

At some parks, all that is needed is a softer surface under the swings.

The tennis and basketball court at Edgecliff Park is riddled with cracks. The fence is too low to keep balls off the street.

The restroom is closed at Orchard Avenue Park because the county can’t afford repairs.

Several unpaved parking lots violate the county’s own air-pollution standards.

The department has few spare parts for plumbing and electrical equipment, meaning workers must juryrig broken fixtures or buy new ones at local hardware stores.

The number of maintenance workers has fallen from 15 in 1970 to eight this year.

“I used to have four guys to run the irrigation system,” said Angove. “Now I have one, and the poor guy is running himself to death.”

As a result, many parks lawns are spotted with brown, indicating broken sprinkler heads.

Angove sees parks funding as a clue to the community’s attitude toward larger social issues.

If children have places to play, he said, maybe we won’t have to spend quite so much on prisons, police and courts. If urban parks are attractive, maybe there won’t be so much flight to the suburbs and rural areas.

“To drive by Edgecliff Park and to see this open space, these trees, how much is that worth?” he asked.

“To see kids playing on swings, what’s that worth?”