Downtown News Editorial: Rec and Parks Needs Help with Quimby

A recent audit of the program that taps developers to pay for creating neighborhood parks does not provide reassurance that Downtown will have new grass, flowers and benches anytime soon, even though there is serious money to pay for them. There is even less chance that the city Department of Recreation and Parks, which runs what is known as the Quimby program, will find a way to track and manage that money.

We hope the audit serves as an additional spark to improvement, especially when nearly $130 million hangs in the balance. The department has not become effective in the wake of similar criticisms in the past.

We think it is time for pressure to come from above. After years of inaction, we’ve lost confidence that Rec and Parks can make changes from within. The stakeholders of Downtown Los Angeles deserve better than the department’s management has provided.

On Feb. 21, City Controller Laura Chick released an audit of the Quimby program, in which housing developers are assessed approximately $3,000 to $9,000 for each new residential unit created; the funds ostensibly go to park creation within two miles of where they are collected. The report focused on Quimby efforts in Downtown Los Angeles.

Some of the results were predictable. Last fall, department General Manager Jon Kirk Mukri sent a letter to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa acknowledging that Rec and Parks had no effective system for tracking or managing Quimby funds. In recent months, the department has stumbled as it has sought to acquire Downtown land for future parks. As detailed on this page before, the department is foolishly wasting resources pursuing a plot in an industrial area that would have few users if purchased and turned into a park.

The audit noted that about $130 million has been collected in Quimby funds – that is a massive amount, with the potential to create parks for thousands of Angelenos. It seems the department would find a way to track, to the last penny, how much money is coming in and how to spend it.

However, the audit noted that four different systems are tracking Quimby funds, and for years the varying numbers were not being reconciled. Alarm bells should have sounded long ago – the audit reported that at the close of fiscal year 2004-05, the Quimby balance had already ballooned to approximately $50 million.

In other words, it was obvious even three years ago that the fund is a rare and special gold mine. The payments from the developers were accumulating as the residential market took off, and department brass was obligated in every sense of the word to make effective (quick and sensible) reinvestments in the neighborhoods from which the funds were taken.

The audit also found that although the department has collected $12 million in Quimby funds Downtown over the past five years, it has only spent $1.3 million in the area. Mukri sought to cast that in a positive light, and in the wake of the audit’s release told Los Angeles Downtown News, “I’m holding it until we reach a critical mass of money where we can make a big expenditure.”

Has the department failed to note soaring land values in Downtown over the past half decade? The development boom that lined Quimby coffers has driven up prices. The audit mentioned that opportunities to purchase property for less money have been squandered by the inaction. Waiting for the critical mass is a terrible idea, and the worst damage may already have been done.

The audit pointed out some things that for years have tied the hands of the department: the two-mile stricture, for example, as well as rules barring the use of Quimby funds going to administrative expenses. There are several such problems.

However, that is where Mukri could have proved his mettle. Chick noted that the department could have taken steps to alter the ordinance. “If the two-mile radius is a problem, change it,” she told Downtown News.

Change is not easy, but that is where leadership comes into play. As the head of Rec and Parks, Mukri should have approached those in power, especially council members and the mayor’s office, and communicated that he had a growing reservoir of funds, tens of millions of dollars, but that existing rules prevented him from spending the money to aid park-starved constituents. The process would not have been easy, but the point is there was a system for altering the status quo. We think at least a few council members would have stepped up to help create more green space in their districts.

Instead, we now have a situation where developers have paid millions of dollars and received few results. Why should they contribute more, they ask, when assessments so far sit unused?

Situations like this make people skeptical of government spending and give bureaucrats a bad name.

It is time for Villaraigosa to give Mukri some help – whether he likes it or not. One idea is to appoint a Quimby czar. If the Quimby rules don’t allow paying for such a solution, take Controller Chick’s advice: fix them. It’s not an unreasonable request: Someone should be in charge of a $130 million pot.