Salt Lake City parks are getting new funding. But can upkeep stay on top of new assets?

Salt Lake City is home to more than 100 parks and open spaces for recreation.

But despite a multimillion-dollar injection of city funding into the parks division for new projects this year, the upkeep of current areas, residents say, is lacking.

“The parks along the Jordan River Trail are in a particularly terrible state of disrepair,” said Liberty Wells resident Jed Wilson, who has visited around 50 area parks as a part of his journey to visit all of the city’s recreational areas.

“I’m a male in my mid-20s. I should feel safe in more situations than most,” Wilson said. “It was scary … just how much blatant and open drug use was happening, drinking was happening…human feces, broken glass, needles all over the place. … The parks on the west side of the city are particularly in bad shape compared to the ones on the east side.”

West-sider and planning commissioner Mike Christensen argued municipal officials don’t commit enough resources to maintaining parks.

“The city is willing to spend millions of dollars on a project, and then, for lack of a better way to describe it, the city just kind of lets everything go to sh - -,” Christensen said. “In the meantime, and when people finally get fed up, the city proposes another multimillion-dollar project in order to try to solve the problem, but there’s never any commitment to actually keep things maintained.”

In a January 2023 maintenance report requested by the City Council, the city’s Public Lands Department conceded that there had been “decline in Salt Lake City’s public lands and park appearance.” A 2022 parks plan found that 63% of the parks were in poor or fair condition.

How crews maintain parks now

The report spelled out how and why parks maintenance had become a concern for city officials. Over the past pre-pandemic decades, the department said it did not receive the investment it needed to adequately maintain and replace old parks equipment.

The city manages its parks by dividing them into four districts. Each district is responsible for around 50 “assets,” which can be a sports field or even just a bench with some turf, said parks division director Toby Hazelbaker.

Seven to 15 employees take care of day-to-day maintenance at parks within their district. They mow lawns, for instance, clear restrooms and empty trash.

“We keep it clean, green and safe,” Hazelbaker said. “Those are our three core functions when we’re out there, and we follow that up with, first and foremost, we take care of turf, trees and trash. We also look at our amenities in the park, the different fixtures that are out there.”

More hands-on maintenance, such as broken sidewalks and curbs, are taken care of by contractors covered by deferred maintenance funds. The parks division gets about $250,000 for this type of work every year.

That amount will need to go up, public lands planning deputy director Tyler Murdock said, as the city brings on new assets for its parks.

“Deferring maintenance is no longer acceptable,” City Council Chair Victoria Petro said during a recent visit to the west side’s Cottonwood Park. “This is part of the reason why I’m apprehensive when we talk about beautiful visions like the Green Loop. We don’t have our feet under us on maintaining this, which is a beautiful asset that we’ve already committed ourselves to.”

Replacing playgrounds

Each park asset, such as a playground, is given a general life expectancy so the division can determine when something needs to be replaced. In the past two budget cycles, the City Council has allocated between $500,000 and $750,000 to replace assets.

Playgrounds, for example, typically last 20 to 30 years, and the city has 60 playgrounds across its parks — meaning the city should be replacing two playgrounds a year.

That has not been the case over the past two decades, Murdock said, leading to a backlog of older assets experiencing more wear and tear than ever.

For now, assets such as damaged water fountains and broken monkey bars are prioritized on a case-by-case basis, Hazelbaker said. Playgrounds have licensed and certified inspectors who check them regularly, but operations employees are typically the first line of defense when reporting damaged or vandalized property.

“We typically catch about 80% of those overnight — ‘Hey, this is a hot item, can somebody please address this?’” Hazelbaker said. “On the other hand, the public’s really great. Our front desk, and there’s mobile systems, SLC Mobile, people can get to us and let us know concerns they’re seeing happening real time, and those are given right to a supervisor of a district and made sure that they’re addressed.”

Staffing has also been a problem, according to the 2023 report. Fewer people are willing to work as seasonal employees, the city struggles to keep up with rising wages and benefits, and tough work conditions related to illegal activity in parks push others away.

“It’s a whole spectrum on what people are doing in our park that our park wasn’t designed for, and it probably adds double the work in some of our larger, busier parks than if there wasn’t a homeless problem,” Hazelbaker said. “Our people can’t get ahead of the game and beautify the park if they’re constantly fixing broken sprinkler heads or picking up trash and old sleeping bags and empty food cans.”

With staffing levels and capital expenditures low, public lands administrators said in the 2023 report that the parks’ conditions convey a message to residents that they aren’t cared for and so-called soft crimes — like drinking in a park or vandalism — are tolerated.

Over time, families coming to a green space to use the playground or host a barbecue may stop if they have too many negative experiences, according to the 2023 report, leaving the park emptier and more likely to invite illegal park use like camping or drug activity.

And the parks that already have less foot traffic are more likely to be on the west side. A survey from the 2022 public lands master plan found 60% of west-siders visit city parks at least once a month compared to 75% of east-siders. The same plan noted that west-siders said reinvesting and revitalizing neighborhood parks was their top, urgent priority.

The west side doesn’t currently host any large showcase parks, sees a lot of illegal camping in existing green spaces and has a lower average household income than the east side, complicating when and how often residents, who frequently work multiple jobs, use city parks.

Impact on residents

Jed Wilson, the Liberty Wells resident, moved to Salt Lake City with his wife from Colorado in early 2023. Since then, he has biked over 1,200 miles across the city and seen 50 Salt Lake Valley parks.

“Public parks are probably the single best use of taxpayer money that we have,” Wilson said. “They’re a great resource that is almost solely devoted to making people live healthier and happier lives. … There are some fantastic parks spread throughout the city, and I really just wanted to see all of them.”

Wilson rates each of the parks he has visited through his Instagram profile, accounting for factors like cleanliness and accessibility. One of the biggest issues he has seen with city parks is the lack of public restrooms.

In the summer, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, most park restrooms are open during the day but locked at night, Wilson recalled. But overnight and during the winter, they’re almost always locked, he said, which results in public defecation.

“When all of our homeless shelters are at max capacity and centered around the west side of the city, it leaves nowhere for the homeless population to go, and so they’re going to naturally go to our parks and public spaces,” Wilson said. “We can’t just point our fingers at the homeless people and say they’re the problem. We’re the problem, too.”

The city contracts with a security service that locks park restrooms every night, Hazelbaker said, but the facilities will also be closed if they experience repeated vandalism.

If security finds people in the restroom when they’re closing them for the night, the individuals are asked to leave. If they resist, police are called.

“People, they’ve found amazing skill at breaking back into our restrooms, to the point that we’re replacing locks on a regular basis,” Hazelbaker said. “If it gets that bad, we’ll actually weld the doors closed.”

Park restrooms experience the most vandalism during the summer, Hazelbaker added. One of the biggest problems they face is when individuals “hole up in there and do drugs,” since oftentimes needles and other paraphernalia will be shoved down a toilet.

Those clogs can damage the restrooms’ plumbing lines, Hazelbaker said, leaving the city with a bill of around “a couple thousand dollars” to have a contractor make repairs.

“We’re trying to keep the public healthy and safe and secure,” Hazelbaker explained. “And when we’re losing that game on a nightly basis, we call the shots to close them, and we have to choose a lesser of two evils. We hope that doesn’t then let people feel entitled to go use the restroom in the bushes or out on the sidewalk, but there’s not a whole lot more we can do.”

Solving the problems

Making up the backlog on old park assets, increasing efficiency for maintenance on existing assets and addressing added pressures on city parks will take work.

But the city has a few solutions underway.

In 2023, the city funded an asset management plan for parks and public lands to build a ‘best practices and prioritization model’ for when certain things need to be most urgently replaced.

The database of park assets doesn’t currently prioritize what needs to be repaired or replaced across the city’s parks. But a recently hired consultant will help enact the asset plan, Murdock said, and ensure items are taken care of on an equitable basis across all parks.

Within the database, all assets are scored to determine their condition and life expectancy. Just this year, the Public Lands Department submitted a request through the city’s capital improvement program to replace the three worst-scoring playgrounds within the parks, and, in return, the City Council allocated $1.5 million for sports courts and playgrounds.

In addition to the asset management plan in development, officials hope to round up a list of unfunded maintenance projects and compile payment options to present to the council.

Earlier this month, council members approved almost $500,000 for the maintenance of public spaces that have recently come on line — in addition to more than $3 million they authorized last month to assist with the backlog of parks and public lands maintenance projects.

The council also recently allocated $100,000 to fund a citywide park restroom study that could reduce vandalism and maintenance costs. The study plans to test a new “restroom configuration” in Fairmont Park to develop new best practices in park restroom management.

Despite concerns over the maintenance of the city’s existing green spaces, municipal officials are looking to add more parkland to keep pace with population growth.

The new Glendale Regional Park is set to partially open next spring with pickleball courts. A playground and basketball court will open soon after in the summer. Mayor Erin Mendenhall has also been pursuing an ambitious plan to create a Green Loop around downtown by adding greenery, multiuse paths and flexible public spaces to underused city streets in time for the 2034 Winter Olympics.

New projects are the responsibility of the Public Lands Department’s planning and design division. This division applies for funding for new programs — including capital improvement projects — and manages these projects through the construction process.

Despite a $150 million to $200 million budget covering 70 to 80 capital projects, the planning division is made up of nine employees, planning and design division director Tom Millar said. Two new hires were approved with this year’s budget, Millar added, so the division is working to add more hands on deck.

“We know that the needs in Salt Lake City for green space far exceed not only our budgets, but our capacity as people and as project managers and professionals in this field,” Millar said. He noted it’s difficult to work on needed projects before funding is available but that it’s also difficult to apply for funding on projects before they have the necessary people power.

“We’re just trying to choose the best things, and the things that are most ready, that have funding, that the public wants the most, that are the most critical,” Millar said, “so that we end up in a place that is better than where we were 20 years ago.”

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