Quantity of funds sways Valley's quality of life

SUNNYSIDE -- Softball players may begin mowing their own fields. Dance teachers are looking for church basements. As for kids in youth soccer, they may not play at all.

To help make up for a $1.1 million shortfall next year, Sunnyside city leaders have suggested virtually doing away with publicly funded parks and recreation.

The 10,000-square-foot community center may close. And everything from pulling park weeds to signing up kids for day camp could land on volunteers, if they get done at all.

It's a common lament. When cities tighten budgets, parks and recreation programs are often the first on the chopping block, costing the community everything from sports leagues to yoga classes.

Grandview closed its pool early this summer and left a few seasonal parks maintenance positions unfilled. Wapato eliminated its parks and recreation department in 2004, while its community center sits mostly empty today. Granger and Mabton have no parks and recreation services.

"It's every small community that's struggling, to be honest with you," said James Cole, the Toppenish Parks and Recreation director.

Even Yakima, a much bigger city, closed three pools in 2005, and made modest spending cuts and raised fees for a number of recreation programs this year. City officials also have said it may not keep funding Fisher Park golf course if more people don't start using it. Leasing it to a private vendor is one option, said Chris Waarvick, public works director.

City officials aim their budget blades at parks and recreation partly because they can. Those services are not mandated like police, firefighting and courts.

And they don't usually pay for themselves, either. This year, participant recreation programs in Sunnyside were expected to bring in $44,000 of the nearly $200,000 it cost to offer them.

They are considered "quality of life" services, and cities offer them because parks are nice and they know kids want to play.

Parks advocates say green public space increases property values, while recreation supporters repeat the "keeps kids off the streets" mantra. Supervised, healthy activities, they argue, give children less time for trouble and decrease the need for police.

"I believe it's the most positive form of public service," says Brit Kramer, executive director of the Washington Recreation and Parks Association. "You hope not to use your fire and police department. You need them, there's no doubt. But you hope to use your parks service."

Parks and recreation isn't the only thing on the budgetary chopping block in Sunnyside. The $346,000 or so the city is trying to save on parks and recreation next year is only a fraction of the savings it needs.

And it's not the first year. The city cut about 23 percent from parks and recreation in its 2008 budget. If next year's suggested cuts happen, parks and recreation would be less than half its level of funding in 2007.

City Manager Eric Swansen suggested cutting three police officers as well, though City Council members may raise taxes to avoid that.

Parks and recreation services can happen without the city.

Swansen hopes to solve some of the problems with a meeting of parks users to "find ways to make this stuff happen." He's open to everything from adopt-a-park programs and volunteers to forming special taxing parks district.

While city officials talk, the kids who played last fall in the city's youth soccer program are sidelined. There is a Lower Valley Youth Soccer Association, a nonprofit recreational league, but it involves travel.

Nonprofit groups run sports leagues, such as Grid Kids football and AAU basketball. Jobs such as registration, recruiting coaches and scheduling fall to volunteers, usually parents already busy with jobs. And those sports sometimes get more competitive than city leagues, which stress even playing time and basic skills.

Some cities use volunteers to maintain parks, too.

In 2000, Prosser volunteers raised money and built the Community Playground under the direction of a hired engineer. They still gather at least once a year to stain the wood, sand out graffiti and scatter new bark on the ground.

To make the best use of volunteers, the city of Bellevue, Wash., hires a volunteer coordinator to recruit help with everything from maintaining trails to monitoring pool tables at community centers.

About 50 areas in the state have formed parks districts to spread costs to people who live in unincorporated areas, while several cities on the eastern shore of Lake Washington share eGov, a Web site that allows residents of those cities to sign up for recreation activities, as well as apply for building permits.

"Those are the kinds of things that we as cities in this area will need to look at," says Charlie Bush, Prosser city administrator.

Prosser has had turnover at its parks and recreation department, but Bush says the city is planning to budget for a new director in 2009.

Bucking the trend, Zillah is adding recreation.

For years, Zillah kids had always traveled to Toppenish for sports, such as T-ball, because Zillah had no parks and recreation program. Three years ago, volunteer parents Al and Tina Bass formed their own team to make the trip together.

The next year, more parents got involved and 130 kids between 4 and 9 years old signed up for T-ball and coach-pitch baseball. All games were in Zillah. This spring, that number doubled with the addition of softball for girls ages 9 to 11.

"It's been awesome," Al Bass says.

The city helped with registration and spent the $2,200 in revenue on equipment and insurance.

The city may add a recreation programmer to the 2009 budget for the first time and include other sports, says city clerk Sharon Bounds.

"We've started out real small, and then it will grow according to whatever we can afford," Bounds says.

In Sunnyside, users are open -- if reluctant -- to the idea of helping.

The nine teams in the Lower Valley Men's Slowpitch Association already hire their own groundskeepers to drag and chalk fields at Sunnyview Park.

The city provides the water and mows the lawn at the park, sold to the city by Yakima County in 2003 for $1. It's also home to a skate park, built with a state recreation grant in 2006.

League President Bob Sarmiento Sr. figures volunteers would eagerly help for a few weeks or months, but after that, who knows? The league may have to raise its fees to hire out more maintenance. Anything to keep their fields.

"We're willing to work something out," Sarmiento says.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.

Sunnyside Council to discuss budget

n Sunnyside City Council members will discuss their city's budget problems, including parks and recreation, at a special meeting 6 p.m. Thursday at the Sunnyside Community Center, 1521 S. First St. For more information, call City Hall at 509-837-3997 or visit www.ci.sunnyside.wa.us.