When someone complained about broken basketball hoops in Baltimore's Gwynns Falls Park this summer, a city worker dispatched to fix the problem couldn't find the playground, yet reported to his bosses that the case had been "closed." Meanwhile, 131 replacement hoops sat unused in a warehouse.
Outside the Farring Bay Brook Recreation Center in South Baltimore, a visitor found hip-high weeds on the tot lot, graffiti scrawled on the jungle gym, splintered benches, drinking fountains that didn't work, a volleyball court without a net and a chess table with its top ripped off.
In Clifton Park in the northeastern section of the city, a crumbling city waterworks building - filled with mattresses, vodka bottles and heaps of garbage - remained open to children more than a month after someone called to urge the city to board up the structure.
And in Brooklyn's Garrett Park, bags of garbage collected during a city cleanup campaign in July remained on a tennis court a month later. The bags had split open, scattering trash over the courts, which have broken benches and no nets.
A monthlong examination of the conditions of four city parks found that 37 of 40 complaints about park maintenance reported to the city between July 26 and July 30 remained unaddressed after more than 30 days.
The slow response to complaints occurred despite a commitment by Mayor Martin O'Malley to rapidly improve the parks, and a pledge by acting parks director Kimberley M. Amprey to respond to citizen complaints within five days and fix them within 30 days.
"Clearly, this is unacceptable and embarrassing," Amprey said yesterday. "It's good for me to see, however, because it means we'll have to make more improvements to the department. We'll have to be more vigilant."
Initiative by mayor
The mayor said that he thinks Amprey has done a "great job" in her eight weeks as acting park chief. "But she's going to need a lot more than 60 days to get the parks department to where it should be," O'Malley said. "We want to make our parks treasures that everyone wants to live nearby."
In July, the mayor launched a new initiative to clean up the city's parks and dismissed former city parks director Marvin F. Billups Jr., whom O'Malley had criticized for moving too slowly to improve maintenance.
During the following two months, the city started paying more than $1 million to private landscaping companies, which kept the grass trimmed in most parks.
The parks department also reshuffled its top administrators this summer, expanded evening hours for 20 recreation centers and added more lights to Patterson Park.
But at least one initiative - a move to privatization - seemed to fail. On July 1, the city laid off 41 parks department janitors and replaced them with contractors, including Power Cleaning Inc.
But then parks officials moved this week to terminate Power Cleaning's $271,000 contract, saying that bathrooms weren't being cleaned, trash wasn't being removed and recreation centers were being vandalized because too many keys to centers were issued and later unaccounted for.
Problems with 311
The 40 complaints tracked by The Sun were called in to the parks department, the public works agency or to the O'Malley administration's new 311 computerized complaint system.
O'Malley said yesterday that the parks department has been slow to incorporate the 311 system into its daily routine.
"We have a great system, but if most of the workers don't use it as part of their daily work, the problems won't get fixed," said O'Malley. "The thing that concerns me most are the complaints that were [marked as completed] when the work wasn't actually done."
Part of the reason for the slow response to citizen complaints, parks officials said, is that the department has a backlog of thousands of complaints. More than 10,000 requests for tree trimming and removal citywide stretch back about four years, Amprey said.
The parks department also has 109 pending requests for maintenance and grass cutting, 74 of which are more than 30 days old. In addition, the city has a backlog of 47 complaints about graffiti in parks and on recreation center buildings.
Amprey said she has cut the backlog of residents' maintenance requests by half since taking office July 8, taking care of 260 during the past two months.
Financial problems have also slowed the department's responses. Many citizen complaints are about poorly maintained playgrounds, which are normally replaced with funds from the state Open Space program, Amprey said. But the state slashed the city's Open Space money from $4.8 million in fiscal 2002 to $2.4 million in fiscal 2003.
Another cause of the slow response to complaints, Amprey said, is that the city didn't have a parks division chief for more than a year.
"If there's no leadership, that would impact the service delivery," said Amprey.
She said that problem was solved Wednesday, when the city Board of Estimates approved a $67,000 contract to hire Chris T. Delaporte to serve under Amprey as interim parks division chief. Delaporte served as the city's chief of parks and recreation from 1984 to 1988.
"We'll get right on these complaints immediately," Delaporte said yesterday.
The Sun conducted its study from July 26 through Aug. 30. Reporters and photographers documented 40 maintenance problems ranging from missing swings to graffiti on picnic shelters.
They called city agencies to report the problems, giving the city operators their real names and addresses but not volunteering their occupations.
The reporters did not complain about problems that appeared to be inordinately expensive to fix, nor did they complain about litter, reasoning that it is partly the responsibility of citizens to pick up trash.
Ten of the complaints were about graffiti on play equipment and park buildings. Six reports were for tall weeds, three for broken water fountains, and several more for problems such as broken park benches, missing swings, and missing basketball hoops and tennis nets.
Three of the 40 problems were fixed by the city. A fourth was solved by local residents.
By Aug. 6, city workers had replaced two broken baby swings in Clifton Park and cut down tall weeds in Bay Brook Park. A reclining chair dumped in Garrett Park was removed by the same date. Early last month, neighbors of Gwynns Falls Park painted over graffiti on the ceiling of a picnic shelter. And though The Sun didn't complain about it, city workers poured mulch around the base of a jungle gym in Bay Brook Park, making it safer and filling in a rut under a swing.
But the equipment in the four parks remains in poor condition.
Dispatcher errors
In some cases, dispatchers who received the complaints appeared to have typed in the wrong addresses, preventing inspectors from finding the problems, according to a review of city records. In other cases, workers apparently concluded the repairs would be too expensive - for example, installing rubber padding beneath a swing set, which could require a lengthy budget request and appropriations process, parks officials said.
In one case, a complaint was made about missing swings on what appeared to be a public park but actually might have been on private property - therefore not the city's responsibility. And in at least three other instances, follow-up reports by city workers describe complaints as "closed," though no action was taken to fix the problem.
On July 26, The Sun called in complaints about missing basketball backboards, tall weeds, broken water fountains and a lack of trash barrels in the section of Gwynns Falls Park opposite 4100 Stokes Drive.
These problems were never fixed. And halfway through August, a huge oak tree toppled onto the playground, preventing children from playing on the slide. The fallen tree has remained for more than two weeks.
'Get this tree out'
On a recent afternoon, Davante Harrison, 7, and two buddies scrambled up the trunk of the tree. Beneath them, glass glittered on the cracked blacktop. Not far away, rusty clothing dryers, broken furniture and a refrigerator - all dumped illegally - stood out in the weeds.
"I wish they would get this tree out of here so we can play on the jungle gym again," said Davante, who lives nearby in Edmondson Village. "It's been here long enough. This whole park should be cleaned up."
Nearby on the basketball court, Shawn Smith, 20, drove past a friend, forcing his way inside for a layup. They can't play a full-court game, because at the other end, one backboard is missing a hoop.
"I think the city is doing a very poor job of maintaining the parks, and it's a serious issue because if the kids don't have someplace to play, they end up causing trouble and going down the wrong path in life," Shawn Smith said after the game, as he reclined on a broken tier of bleachers, smoking a cigarette.
At the Farring Bay Brook Recreation Center recently, a city parks employee watched as a pair of girls swung on a tire swing. Behind them, splintered wooden beams dangled at crazy angles from a row of smashed benches.
The parks worker, who asked not to be named, said she found the condition of the playground embarrassing but noted it wasn't her job to clean it up.
"It's pathetic. ... We've complained about it, but the city says there isn't enough money," said the employee.
In Clifton Park - the former summer estate of Johns Hopkins - Tony Robinson, 29, sat on a picnic bench and shook his head at the litter, broken glass, graffiti-marked picnic shelter and patches of bare dirt.
"I don't believe Baltimore gives much priority to its parks," Robinson said. "It's a shame, because it's not like this in the parks in Minnesota or Chicago or other places I've seen."
Across town in Garrett Park, Antonio Fonseca, 16, dodged between weeds and dumped furniture on a graffiti-covered staircase as he ran up from the trash-strewn tennis courts.
"What kind of example is the city setting for the rest of us?" Fonseca asked. " How do you expect the rest of us to keep the city clean when the city itself won't do its own part?"
Sun staff writers Laura Vozzella, Andrew A. Green, Athima Chansanchai, Jonathan D. Rockoff, Childs Walker, Jason Song and Stephen Kiehl contributed to this article.