June 18: Wither SF Rec. & Park Commission?

The SF Recreation and Parks Commission is supposed to be an oversight agency, a check against bad calls made by the Recreation and Parks Department’s political appointees. But today it is notorious for rubber-stamping the Department’s often ill-planed and inequitable decisions. It acts like an agency captured by the very entity it is suppose to oversee.

For example, the Commission rubber-stamped the Department’s flawed all-golf alternative for Sharp Park Golf Course, ignoring the expert testimony—not to mention the vast majority of public comments—which favored creating a National Park at Sharp Park. Subsequently both the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the SF Weekly exposed flaws in the biological and financial reasoning the Department made, completely undermining the all-golf alternative.

But this is precisely what the Commission is supposed to do: scrutinize proposals to ensure they aren’t flawed or based on unsound assumptions. We can’t expect the Feds or journalists to do the Commission’s job for them every time.

So Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has introduced a charter amendment to revamp the Recreation and Parks Commission. Under the proposal, commission appointments would be shared between the Mayor and the Board of Supervisors, ensuring that no one political agenda can stack the deck against sound decision-making.

Public park supporters are rallying around this charter amendment at a hearing on Friday, June 18, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. before the Board of Supervisors Rules Committee at San Francisco City Hall. Help our government get better: support an improved check-and-balance system at the Recreation and Parks Department and ask your Supervisor to vote for Mirkarimi’s charter amendment.