A Garden-Variety Debate: City Hopes to Charge for Entry to Arboretum to Build World-Class Facility. But Local Folks Just Want Place to Sit in the Sun.
By Joe Eskenazi in Law & Order
Wednesday, Apr. 8 2009 @ 6:30AM
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| Will folks pay to doze beneath this great cypress? |
So it was a surprise for those in attendance to learn that the city's Parks and Recreation Department doesn't want to start charging folks $5 to $7 to simply maintain the mellow little botanical garden as it is. The city aspires to create a botanical garden on par with the nation's finest in Miami, St. Louis, or Brooklyn (don't laugh; Brooklyn's is spectacular). And those places charge up to $20 a pop.
It seems a bit counter-intuitive for the city to skip right past needing nominal fees to stay afloat in these trying times into pitching a grand plan to build a future dream garden worthy of inclusion on a list of the nation's best (and, no doubt, appealing to visiting tourists). But that's how this has gone down.
"The ticketing fee does go toward maintaining the status quo -- and then some," says Park and Rec spokeswoman Lisa Seitz Gruwell. "If this is going to be something we're charging for, it has to be kind of on another level."
This is an odd and, dare we say, tautological rationale: We can't afford to give it to people for free, so we need to charge them. But if we charge them, we need to give them more, so we need to apply their money to things they weren't getting before when they got in for free and may not even want. And there's the rub: Local folks don't desire "and then some" or "another level." They just want what they always had.
Rich Hillis is Park and Rec's director of partnerships -- essentially,
the department's numbers guy -- and he was the recipient of much
vitriol when he delivered a Power Point presentation pitching the
proposed fee. He insists the situation isn't black or white, and, in
many ways, he's got a good case. He argues that the city needs to make
something more of Strybing because it's not feasible to maintain such a
luxurious site for free these days -- and it's not worth
charging for as is.
That sounds a lot like the scenario Gruwell pitched, but Hillis' rationale is stronger because it allows for the fact that the folks enjoying the garden now for free will likely not be the ones paying an estimated $1 million yearly to get in (which Rec and Park believes will result in a net profit of $700,000 ). He notes that Strybing is almost definitely the city's best "neighborhood park" -- but its 11 gardeners dwarf the number allocated for all of McLaren Park, which is more than 20 times Strybing's size (and larger than all Golden Gate Park). When the city comes looking for positions to cut, it won't be knocking McLaren down to two gardeners.
Hillis brushed aside SF Weekly's question of a nominal fee -- say $2 -- to maintain the status quo and fill the $200,000 to $300,000 shortfall he believes Strybing is facing. Maintaining the botanical garden as a neighborhood park is a luxury the city can no longer afford. Hillis feels more people may attend an enhanced garden for cash than now do so for free -- and the city will be the beneficiary.
The angry folks at the meeting just wanted to keep Strybing a neighborhood park, but Hillis stresses that the garden has additional missions of reviving rare plants and exposing visitors to sights they'd never see elsewhere. He notes that it's important the garden accomplish this, too. A steady cash stream would certainly help pay for more plants, better care, and perhaps even some signs and security to keep folks from trampling flower beds or leaving their beer cans in the azaleas.
Yet, despite Hillis' insistence Strybing would remain a neighborhood hub, it's a stretch to think locals would fork over good money to stroll through a five percent scrap of Golden Gate Park's burgeoning greenery when the other 95 percent beckons free of charge.
Who wins or loses? It's hard to say. It appears Hillis was right -- this isn't a black or white issue.
That sounds a lot like the scenario Gruwell pitched, but Hillis' rationale is stronger because it allows for the fact that the folks enjoying the garden now for free will likely not be the ones paying an estimated $1 million yearly to get in (which Rec and Park believes will result in a net profit of $700,000 ). He notes that Strybing is almost definitely the city's best "neighborhood park" -- but its 11 gardeners dwarf the number allocated for all of McLaren Park, which is more than 20 times Strybing's size (and larger than all Golden Gate Park). When the city comes looking for positions to cut, it won't be knocking McLaren down to two gardeners.
Hillis brushed aside SF Weekly's question of a nominal fee -- say $2 -- to maintain the status quo and fill the $200,000 to $300,000 shortfall he believes Strybing is facing. Maintaining the botanical garden as a neighborhood park is a luxury the city can no longer afford. Hillis feels more people may attend an enhanced garden for cash than now do so for free -- and the city will be the beneficiary.
The angry folks at the meeting just wanted to keep Strybing a neighborhood park, but Hillis stresses that the garden has additional missions of reviving rare plants and exposing visitors to sights they'd never see elsewhere. He notes that it's important the garden accomplish this, too. A steady cash stream would certainly help pay for more plants, better care, and perhaps even some signs and security to keep folks from trampling flower beds or leaving their beer cans in the azaleas.
Yet, despite Hillis' insistence Strybing would remain a neighborhood hub, it's a stretch to think locals would fork over good money to stroll through a five percent scrap of Golden Gate Park's burgeoning greenery when the other 95 percent beckons free of charge.
Who wins or loses? It's hard to say. It appears Hillis was right -- this isn't a black or white issue.
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