Ten years ago, Lydia Zaverukha joined the Recreation and Park Department and immediately started working with NPC on a number of projects that have proven to be key to improving the condition of our parks. At that time, the legislation for a new park bond had just passed, as well as legislation requiring the Department to develop Strategic and Operations Plans. Lydia worked with NPC on a variety of stakeholder meetings for that multi-year effort.
Later, in 2003, Proposition C passed, requiring Park Standards be developed and regular evaluations of parks to take place to determine if they are meeting those standards. Lydia was the analyst that was assigned to work with the Controller's Office to develop the park standards. She now manages the program and very much enjoys it.
The Prop. C program is reaching the end of the fifth year of its implementation and has been a tremendous tool for the Department. The ratings for park scores have steadily climbed over these five years, reaching 90% most recently! The standards have been leveraged to assist the Department in a variety of operations issues and Lydia makes all the evaluation assignments each quarter and then reviews and analyzes results and posts them to the website each quarter.
All supervisors in the Department conduct the evaluations, as well as other non-supervisory staff due to the nature of their job in RPD (for instance, Capital, Planning, etc.) Almost every quarter, Lydia trains new RPD staff to conduct the evaluations and also works on an annual joint training with the Controller's Office. Just recently, we did a joint training with NPC, as we included the NPC playground survey along with the park standards evaluation. Both NPC staff and volunteers, as well as RPD staff, evaluated playgrounds using the NPC survey tool this last quarter.
Lydia also monitors the 311 system for Rec and Park, which now includes the NPC's Park Scan service requests. The park evaluations, 311 service requests and NPC Park Scan service requests all feed in to creating work orders in the Department.
“Having a strong park advocacy group such as NPC as a partner to RPD is invaluable: it keeps citizen concerns at the forefront and is truly a vehicle for keeping our democratic process active and effective,” said Lydia.
