District's Playgrounds Get a 'C' Grade

By Cristi Hegranes

It wasn't just another day at the park.

When more than 100 San Franciscans took to all 144 of the City's playgrounds on a sunny Saturday in February, they had more than play on their minds. The swarm of volunteers, armed with survey forms, turned a jaundiced eye on every playground to compile a report card for San Francisco facilities.

Organized by the San Francisco Neighborhood Parks Council (NPC), the "Love Your Playground" survey effort relied on volunteers combing their local playgrounds looking for unnoticed or unremediated maintenance problems. The playground report card was presented to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in mid-March.

It wasn't all good news.

While more than half of San Francisco's playgrounds scored A's or B's, 45 percent received a C, D or F, including the South Sunset Playground, which was recently vandalized.

"Rec. and Park was not willing or able to go out and survey the playgrounds," said Isabel Wade, the Neighborhood Parks Council's executive director. "Many cities survey their parks once a month. San Francisco hasn't done it in six years."

Rose Dennis, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department's (RPD) director of communications and public relations, said it is unclear what impact, if any, the volunteer-driven report card will have. The volunteers, who headed out to grade the parks, after receiving a brief training, were on the lookout for broken equipment, rusted or corroded play structures and splinters or other hazardous materials. The survey also directed volunteers to watch for surfacing issues, like the depth and cleanliness of sand and cracks in hard surfaces.

Because arsenic in wood play structures can be dangerous, many volunteers were on the alert for proper paint jobs on wooden equipment installed before 1991. Most lumber that's sold for outdoor use in the U.S. today is pressure treated and injected with toxins that prevent decay and bug infestations. The most common preservative, chromated copper arsenate (CCA), is 22 percent pure arsenic. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission acknowledges that CCA poses elevated cancer risks, as children can easily ingest arsenic after prolonged contact with the treated wood. Properly painting outdoor equipment seals-in the poison and greatly reduces health risks. The RPD is responsible for sealing wooden structures by thoroughly and regularly painting them.

But the survey revealed that only 42 percent of San Francisco's wooden play structures are properly painted. No San Francisco district received an A average. Districts 8, 9 and 10 brought home the best report cards, each with Bs. Districts 1 through 7 averaged C's and District 11 posted the City's only D average. Citywide, more than half of all playground equipment was rusted, rotted or corroded, and nearly half of all swings were considered unsafe due to open s-hooks.

"The s-hooks were an area of concern that came up a lot," said Jeff Condit, NPC's playground and capital projects coordinator. "They need to be closed at least to the width of dime. They tend to open up over time so there can be entanglement issues with kids' clothing. Rec. and Park just has to go out with some pliers to fix them."

Though the survey format was adapted from the National Program for Playground Safety, volunteers were not conducting a safety survey.

According to Condit, the survey was modified and "refocused on maintenance issues," which Condit says RPD was "more comfortable with."

"I think the idea for a survey like this is great," says Amanda Morales, a mother of a toddler who lives near Mission Dolores Park. "But I wish someone would look into safety issues as well as upkeep."

According to an RPD staff member, who asked not to be named, the reason behind RPD's insistence on a maintenance rather than a safety survey reveals a much deeper problem with the City's playgrounds. The staffer says there was "fierce discussion over the (Love Your Playground) survey." Had the Neighborhood Parks Council certified its volunteers to be safety inspectors, "we would see a good percentage of the City's parks not meeting even basic national safety standards. I think if they (the Parks Council) had gone ahead and done a safety survey, a lot of our parks would have to close."

"There have been a lot of changes in safety regulations in recent years and I'd say a majority of our playgrounds are not up to code," Wade said. "Hopefully, we can use the (survey results) to get Rec. and Park to pay attention to maintenance issues and in places where things are really dire, it will be a wake-up call for our civic body. Maybe they will prioritize a new way to find money for parks programs."

When it was announced that the City could have a windfall of tax monies in the $100 million range, one of the proposals put forth to spend it came from SF Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, who proposed that $35 million be spent on the Rec. and Park Department's Capital Projects Plan. Peskin's plan would complete all of the Phase 1 projects in the capital plan that were supposed to be completed with money from a $110 million bond measure passed by city voters in 2000. Peskin's proposal would provide money for the Lincoln Park Master Plan ($600,000); Lincoln Park Playground ($1.1 million); Sava Pool ($3 million); and the Lake Merced Master Plan and overlook and trail ($1 million).

"A number of projects were chopped off the go-ahead list when Rec. and Park realized they were running out of money," Wade said.

With more families with children under the age of six leaving San Francisco every year, Wade believes maintaining playgrounds could be the first step in reversing that trend.

Christi Hegranes wrote this article for the Neighborhood Newswire.