The Recreation and Parks Department issued layoff notices to 78 people on February 27th, totaling 15% of management staff and 7% of field staff. Six vacant gardener positions were among those eliminated to reach the nearly $12M in cuts the Department needs to make to their $140M annual budget. The Department receives about $35M annually from the City’s General Fund and has been asked to cut 25% of that in the coming fiscal year. Layoffs will become effective in May, saving the Department money for the last few months of this fiscal year as well as into the coming year. The majority of the layoffs were among recreation staff.
With this extreme budget crisis, NPC is advocating for two major outcomes:
1) First, that the City ensure no further cuts are made to RPD funding and that every effort is made to preserve line staff, including gardeners, maintenance personnel and custodians.
2) Second, that the value of volunteers be recognized and leveraged to ensure that reductions in staff and funding do not result in degradation to our neighborhood parks.
Now is the time for the community to partner with RPD and work together to keep our parks as clean, safe and well maintained as possible while continuing to examine future revenue streams that could better insulate RPD against City cuts.
NPC urges you to contact your Supervisor* immediately to voice your support for protecting RPD from further budgetary impacts as well as press for volunteer reform that will allow the community to step up and help our parks!
*For email contact information for individual Supervisors, click here. If you do not know which district you live in, click here to see a map, or here to search for your district by your neighborhood or mailing address (requires a high speed internet connection.)
General Mailing address:
Board of Supervisors
1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, Room 244
San Francisco, CA 94102-4689
(415) 554-5184
General email address: board.of.supervisors@sfgov.org
