Keep recreation out of the crosshairs

At 50, Costa Mesa is not unlike those of us who are staring down the

barrel of middle age. It’s not old, but it’s not young either. The

knees hurt from time to time. The hair’s thinning in some places and

fading to shades of gray in others. But still we’ve got some energy

and a half century of wisdom behind us. Or so we should hope.

What I have seen of Costa Mesa at 50, during my yearlong tenure on

the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, is a city that indeed has

energy and a lot of hope for a better future. These are things to

hold on to. But there’s plenty to fret about, too.

The hopeful things about Costa Mesa are these. In the 1990 to 2000

census period, the city’s population of 5- to 9-year-olds increased

by nearly a third. Its population of 10- to 14-year-olds almost

doubled. And its contingent of 15- to 19-year olds grew by nearly

40%. Clearly, Costa Mesa is a family town -- a place where parents

feel good about raising their youngsters. That’s a good thing.

Another hopeful sign is the outstanding quality of our Parks and

Recreation Department programs. Costa Mesa provides thousands of

children opportunities to learn, run, laugh and play in a world that

increasingly demands more of their parents’ time, which means having

fewer ticks on the clock to spend with their kids.

That aside, here’s where the furrowed brow comes in. From several

fronts, an ill wind is blowing through town that seems to want to

uproot and dismantle many of the recreational institutions -- and

their support structures -- that keep our city’s youngsters happy,

engaged, fit and off the streets.

Ponder these headlines for a moment.

Last summer, members of the Mese Verde Villas Homeowners Assn.

marched -- with attorney in tow -- before the Parks and Recreation

Commission and the City Council. Their condominiums, sandwiched on

Iowa Street between TeWinkle Intermediate School and the San Diego

Freeway, they claim, were being inundated with the sounds and sites

of too much Little League baseball, an onslaught of AYSO soccer

games, and the usual symptoms that go with kids and families playing

organized, supervised sports on the weekend and after school. They

demanded that the city reduce the number of hours our city’s youth

could play on these fields.

Just two weeks ago these same folks stood before the city’s

Planning Commission, lobbying to force Costa Mesa Little League

groups to remove their sponsor banners during the week from the

outfield fences at the TeWinkle School’s baseball diamonds. The

gripe? The banners are an eyesore, a “blight” on the community.

That’s right, a blight. Never mind these banners help keep

registration fees low so more kids can play baseball.

Sporadically, over the weeks and months in between, various other

neighborhoods throughout the city routinely lobbed complaints at City

Hall about too much use of our city’s athletic fields. Apparently,

there’s just too much playin’ going on out there.

That recreation in our city is in the crosshairs comes from other

quarters, too.

Writing in the March 13 edition of the Daily Pilot, Councilman

Allan Mansoor lit after city-sponsored recreation programs as if they

were boils. Arguing in favor of budget cuts before contemplating any

new revenue sources to rescue Costa Mesa from its thorny financial

pickle, the mayor pro tem’s piece focused, nearly exclusively, on

reducing recreational services to Costa Mesa’s children.

None of this is to say that athletic fields should be used 24

hours a day, seven days a week, or that our city should spend its

money like tanked sailors on shore leave. But given Costa Mesa’s

healthy influx of children over the last decade, I would argue these

examples demonstrate attitudes and leadership that are precisely

wrong at this point in our city’s history. At the very least, they

are not in the long-term interest of the whole Costa Mesa community.

Why?

Consider what the future recreational demand of this city holds

for us. According to the Costa Mesa Parks and Recreation Master Plan,

our city will need 18.9 youth baseball fields for every 26,200 Costa

Mesans by 2025. Right now, we have one for every 26,200 folks. We

will need 25.1 soccer fields. We now have 17.1. We will need 27.7

tennis courts. Today we have 12. And we will need 2.6 skate parks. We

have zero at the moment -- though final plans have been approved for

the city’s first.

Clearly, Costa Mesa doesn’t have nearly enough playing fields.

Worse, we don’t have the land or the money to build more. We might

have, had we set out to begin purchasing more park land back in 2000,

when former Councilman Joe Erickson’s idea to increase of the city’s

transient occupancy tax for just such a purpose was placed on the

November ballot. Voters rejected the measure, but not by much. Had it

passed, perhaps the Mesa Verde Villas folks would have less “impact”

and “blight” on their neighborhood by now.

Mansoor’s hunt to cut recreation programs dresses more like an

idea of ideology than one purely rooted in fiscal concerns. Many of

the city’s recreation programs either break even or generate

revenues. Some cost the city money, but not so significantly as to

make a material impact on the budget if eliminated. It’s sort of like

saying you’re going to cut calories, so you tell the waiter to hold

the parsley on that steak dinner you just ordered.

Alternatively, cutting these programs denies our city’s kids the

healthy alternatives to, say, spray painting public property, joining

a gang or lifting a pack of gum from the corner liquor store.

Now that you know this, on Monday the City Council will noodle on

a range of options to fine-tune our city’s budget. They’ll consider,

again, the possibility of placing a transient occupancy tax increase

before the voters (a tax, by the way, that tourists pay) and with it

the opportunity for more fields for our kids to play on. They’ll also

consider cutting several recreational programs, which is really

cutting opportunities to keep kids out of trouble.

Let’s hope the City Council’s majority makes the right decisions

for the sake of Costa Mesa’s young and its future.

* BYRON DE ARAKAL is a member of the Costa Mesa Parks and

Recreation Commission and a former Daily Pilot columnist.