San Jose city leaders are discussing spending $2.5 million to place a measure on next year’s ballot to levy a sugar tax or a new property tax assessment for park maintenance. San Jose residents deserve assurance that the Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services Department (PRNS) can be an effective custodian of current resources before being given more. The real problems within PRNS are not about money — they are about an ineffective leadership culture.
Visit any park during the day and watch operations firsthand. You’ll see many hardworking employees doing their best to care for San Jose parks. However, to the careful observer, you will also see significant problems in plain sight.
Too often, employees sit in idling trucks on personal phone calls, or crews spend more time driving to and from corporate yards than they do in parks doing actual maintenance. In one example, an employee was seen asleep in his truck while his immediate supervisor sat beside him. The senior park manager’s office was in that same park, yet the behavior went unchecked — and longstanding basic maintenance needs in this park continued to go unaddressed…