This is the kind of thing the city’s park service officer may face. (Photo taken in August on the Periwinkle Bikepath.)
Starting next year, Albany will have a city employee to patrol the parks and trails, watch out for trouble, and do something about it when trouble is found.
The city council approved the position of “park service officer” last week. The vote was 5-1, with Bessie Johnson voting no. She didn’t explain her vote, but during a work session two days before she had wondered whether the new position would be able to do much. She also questioned the cost, estimated to be $95,000 in pay and benefits.
The request for the new position had come from Police Chief Marcia Harnden and Kim Lyddane, director of parks and recreation. Their memo to the council said the job would be represented by the Albany police union and paid for from revenue of the new $9 monthly city services fee added to water and sewer bills.
Harnden and Lyddane told me they expect to have a person hired, trained and be ready to start in January.
What exactly would the job entail and what would the officer be expected to do in certain situations, such as when coming across graffiti, dump sites or illegal camps?
This employee would not be a sworn police officer and would not be armed on the job. But they — I’m throwing in the towel on proper pronouns here — would wear a uniform (green, not black like the cops) and could write citations and trespass people, meaning to ban them from particular premises.
Unlike a sworn officer, the employee could not make arrests, the chief told me. “If an arrest is needed, they would call for backup from a police officer.”
“The primary focus is on parks, trails and other city facilities,” the chief wrote. “Right now that duty is falling to a sworn sergeant and is taking that person away from more pressing law enforcement duties.”
Coming across graffiti or dump sites, the PSO would be expected to document the problem and clean it up or, in bigger cases, report it to the police and follow up with park maintenance to get the problem removed.
The proposal approved by the council included buying a utility truck for about $24,000. The chief said they have in mind a Chevy Colorado, a mid-size pickup they hope to buy at the state bid price.
Creation of this job is intended to fight an increase in graffiti, other vandalism, illegal dumping, and unauthorized camping, Harnden and Lyddane told the council. People trying to enjoy Albany’s trails and parks no doubt hope this move will have the desired effect. (hh)
If the new employee actually cleans up that would be great. If they just report back to an already overwhelmed city system, you accomplish nothing. There is nothing wrong with cleaning up garbage left by the houseless. Think about all the dumping that takes place on city and public lands (old couches, hazardous waste) by regular citizens (non-homeless people) and I don’t see a difference. Think about the fees you pay to allied waste to pick up your garbage on the street. I have no problem paying a fee to collect garbage from other citizens in the community that happen not to have homes. My position is not one of pro or against helping houseless, it is one base on practicality and reality.
Woodsy Owl “Give a Hoot Don’t Pollute”, rangers use to give out patches. I saw a sign on Hwy 22 that says the fine for littering is $6250, I remember as a kid it being $500. Also saw a kid on a skateboard the other day with his Dutch Bro. drink finish it and just throw the cup on the ground. Can you imagine doing that as a kid? We were told after leaving the camp site, go fill a bag up with trash. At some point personal responsibility has to come back in play, both for homeless and some of those in that situation acting lawless and those not in that situation but also acting lawless, not this “Hey government take care of it for me”. Government should be a partner… not a parent.
Albany Chief of Police says about creating a new position to do the park patrol work: ““Right now that duty is falling to a sworn sergeant and is taking that person away from more pressing law enforcement duties.”
If the sworn sergeant is doing work assigned by the Chief, how can that be interpreted as “taking that person away from more pressing duties.”
Albany is not exactly your crime capital, so if a sworn officer is upholding the laws regulating garbage in the parks, then it seems like that sergeant is doing the work he/she was hired to do perfectly in tune with Albany needs. The Chief never explains what the more important work is. Are we simply to take the Chief’s word?
HH, you’re trolling us with the pronoun comment.
$95,000 (includes benefits) with the inflation we are seeing today is not out of line for someone that’s competent. You can’t pay $50K when you’re housing is averaging $400k and your grocery bills are up 25%. Here ‘s a good paper on inflation and where we are going.
https://dailyhistory.org/What_Role_Did_Inflation_Play_in_the_Collapse_of_the_Roman_Empire
It’s also time to enter the 21st century, I would prefer to see some electric options used for patrol, transport, and observation, something like the new Polaris Ranger EV https://ranger.polaris.com/en-us/ranger-ev/ also allows a trailer to be added. List in the qualifications for the candidate, drone operator (drones can only be used over parks and open spaces, alleviate privacy issues), we want to see all the little nooks and crannies that the Ranger can’t get to. This is a good time to really analyze and think through a new position, tailor it exactly for the challenges that the Albany landscape presents.
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“95 k not out of line” you mean some college grad would turn down 75k? What happened to putting the job up for bid? This is a glorified janitor making 100k with COLA’s and pay raises.
I get it… and I’m the first one to say we need to cut costs and live within our means but this is a skilled position and it has risk. Maybe not as much as the next level up but it has risk way beyond a janitorial position, you need someone that knows what they’re doing. At the last council it was mentioned that one of these camps has sprung up over at Takena Landing and the chief said it’s going to cost a lot of city funds to get rid of it. At some point you need to get ahead of this before it gets out of control, perhaps if this person was in place that situation could have been avoided by just showing up and confronting or at least seeing that it was started and coming up with a plan, prevention is always much more cost effective that dealing with the aftermath. So far you have to admit our city has done a pretty good job of keeping these encampments out, especially when just next door in Corvallis you have basically total lawlessness.
If we hire this person and still have camps showing up or the community still has our outdoors spaces and environment being vandalized then we can come back around and ask why? But you also have to remember this is one person being hired, however it would be nice to have someone familiar with some of the technology out there which would allow the job to be done more effectively.
The clean up looks like a good job for people awarded public service hours from the courts. They also could be awarded time and a half for dumping shopping carts into approved receptacles and returning them to the businesses that own them.
Sorry but the citation will just be thrown on the ground with these peoples other garbage. A paid position that has no way of being effective as there is no ability (laws being enforced). Another $95,000 gone with few results. Why not use that money for more dumpsters for those already VOLUNTARILY cleaning up after people.
How much more would a “genuine” police officer cost, assigned to basically the same position?
It seems like it would be much more efficient to arrest/cite violators on the spot instead of standing by and waiting for a “genuine” officer to show up. One could also do “real” officer work when traveling between parks/dumps.
You really need 24/7 on these spots.
$95,000 is likely the TOTAL cost of employment, not the salary.
Salary + Overtime + Health Insurance + Retirement + Uniforms + Social Security + Other State/Fed taxes + Paid Leave + Disability etc.
Surely you folks saw these kind of things on pay stubs before?
It’s a union job that means plenty of OT. Call for help at end of shift, Cha-Ching. 95k is the base salary. The endless supply of other people money can only be appreciated by government employees.
No, $95,000 is not the base salary. It’s the estimated cost of the job to the city, including benefits and amounts paid to the government such as SS.
Hiring a $95K hall monitor for a department that couldn’t solve this problem with 91.25 FTEs & a $12,841,900 budget for wages, salaries, benefits & overtime. Sounds promising.
The Albany Parks Department has a group of volunteers who have adopted parks in our community. We pick up trash, clean up flower beds and report areas of concern (broken playground equipment, vandalism, etc). I’m having trouble understanding what this new position will accomplish?
Declining quality of Albany’s Parks
During his tenure as Albany’s Parks and Recreation Director, Dave Clark consistently taught and practiced that the secret to having beautiful, well maintained parks, supported by Albany’s citizens, was by creating beautiful, well maintained parks and making their upkeep an operational priority.
There have always been folks who will walk across a park to destroy something; fortunately there are other citizens who will go out of their way to clean up a mess made by others. It’s a well known and observable truth that trash begets trash. When maintenance declines it becomes much easier for folks to rationalize leaving a mess, destroying something, etc. in an already poorly maintained environment.
While Dave Clark was at the helm Albany was known, and routinely recognized with awards, for having many of the best maintained municipal parks in the State of Oregon. Dave has a passion for making every neighborhood park a place of beauty.
Sadly our parks have been in a slow but consistent decline, as attention to routine maintenance has become less of a priority. Bessie Johnson is right, it’s well known that a declining willingness/ability to provide appropriate levels of attention to maintaining our parks is not a situation we can police our way out of.