Commitment to Parks

The Orange County Board of Supervisors has a longstanding commitment to encourage the development of local public parks. It is a commitment that the county must steadfastly maintain.

The policy was hard hit by the passage in 1978 of Proposition 13, which cut off service-area tax revenues that supported park development and maintenance.

That loss in funds resulted in many park sites being set aside for future use, meantime sitting idle and growing weeds. It also led to a push by some builders to have the county stop acquiring the park sites and ease its local park regulations to allow them to use private parks in their housing developments to satisfy the county requirement that a builder either pay fees or provide 2.5 acres of land per 1,000 people in new housing.

The county board should do neither.

The county should be seeking ways to develop the local park sites that it now owns or has “irrevocable” use of rather than allow them to lie fallow. But, at a minimum, it should not abandon its policy of building a land bank of neighborhood park sites and open space just because it is currently short of development funds.

The county is considering a program of assessments against homeowners to raise funds for park development.

It would even be in the self-interest of builders, as some have done, to go ahead and develop the parks themselves, recognizing that an attractive, well-equipped neighborhood park could help the sale of their houses.

What the county must not do, however, is change its acquisition policy and forever lose for future generations irreplaceable parkland. Nor should it allow builders to create private, exclusive playgrounds for a select few that forever shut out the public from the local parks that should be available to all residents.