The San Bruno Beacon

San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson refuses to make the budget cuts necessary to reduct the cost of City government and create a budget surplus. However, Jackson sees no problem increasing the Park and Recreation fees San Bruno's children and teenagers must pay to use City of San Bruno Park and Recreation facilities.

San Bruno City Manager Jackson is on a tax, rate, and fee increase rampage to pay for her fiscal mismanagement of San Bruno. If you are a San Bruno resident, you, and now your children, are paying for this fiscal mismanagement.

Once again, at the July 10, 2007 San Bruno City Council Meeting, San Bruno City Manager Connie Jackson was trying to increase the financial pain on San Bruno's residents, and now their children, by targeting them with more rate and fee increases on City Park and Recreation services. City Manager Jackson wants to dramatically increase the fees charged for adults, teenagers, and children who play basketball at the San Bruno City Gym and use other City owned Park and Recreation facilities. She's even raising the fees to swim in the City's 60 degree pool. City Manager Jackson is now working to price our children out of their recreation facilities. What should San Bruno's teenagers and children do for recreation if they can't afford to pay the higher prices for Park and Recreation activities? It is wrong for City Manager Jackson to target San Bruno's teenagers and children with these outrageous rate and fee increases on their recreational activities.

It is particularly galling to me that City Manager Jackson is working to price San Bruno's children out of the City's Park and Recreation facilities. Perhaps, City Manager Jackson, who earns between $12,804 to $15,710 per month, and has personally borrowed money from the City of San Bruno for her personal use, is out of touch with how much impact her proposed recreation rate and fee increases have on families who do not live the same privileged taxpayer supported lifestyle she leads.

As I see it, participation in sports and recreation is an essential part of our children's lives. Many of the best moments of a person's young life are spent participating in sports. I graduated from Serra High School in San Mateo, a high school with a great sports tradition and arguably one of the best sports programs in the United States. I have seen first hand how a young person's participation in sports can change their life for the better. This is why I think that the children of San Bruno residents should not be charged anything to use the City's Park and Recreation facilities.

Once again, City Manager Jackson has her priorities all wrong. San Bruno's Park and Recreation facilities are not private businesses or profit centers. They should be free for the children of San Bruno's residents. And if free means that some highly compensated San Bruno City Management employees need to have their salary and benefit packages cut or positions eliminated, so be it. The interests of the residents of San Bruno and their children come first. This is something that the top bureaucrats at San Bruno's City Hall do not seem to understand.

At the July 10, 2007 San Bruno City Council meeting, City Manager Jackson's attempt to increase City Park and Recreation fees was sidelined, but not rejected, when it was challenged by Councilmembers Rico Medina and Ken Ibarra. In the end, with the exception of the Park and Recreation fee increases, the Council voted for all rate and fee increases recommended by San Bruno City Manager Jackson. The Council also voted to approve San Bruno Park and Recreation fee increases recommended by City Manage Jackson but not set the increases until 2008.