Our Parks Deserve Stewardship, Not Salesmanship
Mission Local’s reporting on Recreation and Park’s spending at Sunset Dunes should alarm anyone who cares about the future of San Francisco’s open spaces.
Voters were promised environmental sustainability funding in 2020: climate adaptation, native habitat restoration, and resilience projects to protect our shoreline. What the public received instead were hammocks, skate parks, and “nature exploration areas” — bond dollars stretched to cover projects that are neither environmental nor sustainable.
This is part of a broader pattern. Under General Manager Phil Ginsburg, the Recreation and Park Department has too often prioritized flashy new projects and high-revenue events over its most basic responsibility: caring for and preserving the parks we already have.
In recent years we have seen Golden Gate Park become increasingly treated less like a refuge for all San Franciscans and more like a revenue stream. Another Planet Entertainment’s multi-weekend Outside Lands festival, along with other ticketed concerts like Dead & Co. this August and one scheduled this fall in Robin Williams Meadow, have turned major sections of the park into private venues for weeks at a time. These events may bring in dollars, but they erode public trust when transparency is lacking and when community impact is dismissed as the cost of doing business.
Save SF Parks believes in transparency, equity, and accountability. Bond funds, public-private partnerships, and parks themselves must serve the city as a whole — not just well-off neighborhoods, vanity projects, or those who can afford a concert ticket. True sustainability, both environmental and social, requires caring for the natural assets San Franciscans already treasure and ensuring every neighborhood, not just the well-resourced ones, gets its fair share.
The next Recreation and Park General Manager has a choice: double down on inequity and opacity, or return the department to its fundamental mission — stewarding our parks, equitably and sustainably.
