Opinion: Los Angeles parks are failing. The city's own study shows how to fix it

Los Angeles parks are in trouble.

In May, the Trust for Public Land ranked Los Angeles 93rd out of 100 major U.S. cities for parks, its lowest ranking ever and the seventh consecutive year of decline.

The recently completed Los Angeles Park Needs Assessment, where we both served on its steering committee, helps explain why. The City spends just $92 per resident on parks, less than a third of what peer cities spend. One in three Angelenos lacks a park within a 10-minute walk of home.

Los Angeles has structurally defunded its parks. The results are visible across the city. The Department of Recreation and Parks has lost 28% of its full-time staff and 62% of its part-time staff since 2008. Recreation centers have cut hours. Pools have reduced public access. Deferred maintenance has accumulated to more than $2 billion.

But the assessment did more than document the problem. It identified the root causes, determined what adequate annual funding would look like, and pointed directly to charter reform as the solution.

The parks funding formula has sat unchanged in the City Charter since 1937, while a 2009 policy change around chargebacks for indirect costs today means 40% of the Department of Recreation and Parks charter allocation is returned to the General Fund. The assessment identified charter reform as a tool to fix this structural issue.

The Department of Recreation and Parks's current allocation is $298 million. Doubling the minimum allocation from 0.0325% to 0.065% – still less than 1% of assessed property values- would bring that to approximately $596 million, almost entirely meeting the annual operating need the assessment identified.

Restored funding could return 123 recreation and senior centers to full public hours and programming, reopen pools and beaches, restore grounds-keeping and clean restrooms at 500 parks citywide, rebuild the Park Ranger Division, staff cooling centers, emergency shelters and evacuation centers, support wildfire mitigation, plant trees and manage natural resources, expand access to new parks and address a $2 billion deferred maintenance backlog – the basic city services Angelenos deserve.

This is not a windfall. It is a restoration – phased in responsibly over four years, the same approach L.A. voters approved for the Library system through Measure L in 2011 in response to a similar structural defunding.

Libraries recovered. Parks can too.

The health and economic consequences are measurable. Physical inactivity is responsible for 12.6% of all health care costs in the United States. In Dr. Cohen's research across ten cities in Southern California, for every $30 per capita spent on parks, there was a 13% lower prevalence of stroke and heart failure, 8% lower atrial fibrillation, 7% lower coronary heart disease, 6% lower obesity, and 4% lower rates of hypertension, Type 2 diabetes, and breast and colon cancer.

Her research found it's also a good investment: every dollar spent on parks programming returns $11 in lower health care costs and every dollar spent on maintaining the park system returns at least $3 in broader local economic benefits.

On June 12, the City Council's Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee will decide which charter reforms advance to the full Council. Later in June, the full City Council will decide whether to place this proposal before voters on the November ballot. 

The City’s assessment identified the problem, documented the consequences, and charted a solution to correct it. The question before City Hall is simple: Will Angelenos be given the opportunity to vote on it?