It’s hard to play sports in the rain, but it’s even harder to play at a park that’s ankle deep in water—or even deeper by the time you read this. Recent rains flooded several of Santa Maria’s public fields, a few of which double as water retention basins, limiting access to city parks during the wet season.
While water is one barrier to an enjoyable day outside, another is a fence, like the one at Allan Hancock College’s soccer field. Local retired Stanford professor Bernard Baycroft remembers kids and families gathering at the field for years after he first moved to the valley in 1989.
But the sprawling field hasn’t been filled with youngsters or parents during the hours it’s left vacant by Hancock’s students, Bernard told the Sun, ever since a fence was erected around the field.
“They had organized soccer games and Frisbee tournaments there on weekends, but I don’t see hardly anyone using the field anymore,” he said.
The lack of access is a part of a larger trend Baycroft noticed not just in Santa Maria, but in the rest of the county, as local government agencies struggle to balance public access with use conflicts and dwindling budgets.
But a tight budget isn’t necessarily the impetus for the fence around Hancock’s soccer field. In 2006, voters approved Measure I, a $180 million general facilities bond that funded several major capital construction projects and allowed the school to modernize its campus. Baycroft noticed the fence go up sometime after the measure was passed.
Andrew Masuda, Hancock’s public information officer, wasn’t able to pinpoint exactly when the fence went up, but he told the Sun that it’s been there since at least 2013.
A sign on the fence states that anyone wishing to use the field must receive pre-approval from the college’s student activities office. The college doesn’t charge a fee to use the space, but it must be reserved by approved groups.
Newly elected Hancock board of trustees member Dan Hilker also remembers the field being completely open for public use while he was growing up in town.
“I thought it should be open to all people everywhere to use it,” Hilker told the Sun. “I think that could easily be taken care of.”
Baycroft noticed a similar situation with Simas Park behind the Abel Maldonado Community Youth Center. However, Mark van de Kamp, Santa Maria’s public information officer, said that the park has been fenced for at least three decades.
What Baycroft probably noticed, van de Kamp said, was that the gates were closed. He noted two reasons for this.
First, the park is normally available for public use with a reservation, van de Kamp said, although there’ve been some conflicts in the past between patrons who had reserved the park and those who hadn’t.
Other issues that led to the gate closure, he added, included illegal camping and people leaving trash. Those problems persisted despite repeated intervention from city rangers, van de Kamp said.
“The overall aim is to provide safe and clean public recreational areas,” he explained.
Van de Kamp also noted that Simas Park is a retention basin and floods during winter, limiting the availability of the park. But Simas Park is just one of 234 acres of park space available for public use in the city.
There’s also Los Flores Ranch Park, the nearly 3-square-mile open space park off Highway 101 just past Orcutt. It’s large enough to accommodate recreational activities such as horseback riding and mountain biking. The park is 8 miles southeast of Santa Maria, so getting there can be a challenge for some locals, but van de Kamp said it offers a place to escape the city’s urban center.
But it does cost money to get into Los Flores. Daily access fees to enter the park are $3 for adults, but youth under the age of 15 can visit for free. Unless, of course, you’re a resident of Santa Maria—then access is always free.
Locals may have noticed that the iconic wide-open space of Los Padres Forest recently gained more restrictions. Overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, the forest no longer offers free access to certain campsites, since the Forest Service consolidated management of its campsites to a corporation called Parks Management Company last November, according to Andrew Madsen, public affairs officer for the Forest Service in Goleta.
The new oversight was necessary, Madsen said, because bathrooms and fire rings at some sites were in serious need of maintenance and the Forest Service didn’t have the funding. Access to day use campsites is $10 per vehicle or $50 for an annual pass, according to campone.com.
The public-private partnership comes in the wake of decreasing Forest Service budgets, of which as much as 50 percent is dedicated to fighting fires instead of managing campsites, Madsen said.
Baycroft considers this practice—entities charging citizens to access spaces paid with tax dollars—double dipping. But Madsen has heard it before.
“We just don’t have the money to get out there,” Madsen told the Sun, adding that the alternative was to start closing or decommissioning campgrounds, but the public didn’t approve of that either. “Having Parks Management as a partner is the best way to manage replacing deteriorating campgrounds.”
Staff Writer David Minsky can be reached at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Jan 12-19, 2017.