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Birds enjoy a pond at William Land Park in 2024. The 230-acre park is used by day for picnics, jogs, zoo visits and more.<\/p>\n
SCOTT LORENZO<\/p>\n
Special to The Bee<\/p>\n
Kristina Rogers ran through a list of things that she said people had been finding in William Land Park.<\/p>\n
Rogers is president of the Land Park Community Association and has lived in the neighborhood, one of Sacramento\u2019s oldest outside the central city, for more than 20 years. The 230-acre park is used by day for picnics, jogs, zoo visits and more.<\/p>\n
After hours is a different story, though.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll over the park and at night when it is closed, people are driving into the park,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cAnd in the morning, what the park meetings people find, what people who are jogging and walking through the park find are condoms, needles, liquor bottles and tons of trash all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the park is being used at night for all kinds of behaviors that it should not be used for,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
William Land Park is open from sunrise to sunset. The city recently posted signs in the park that prohibit parking from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. The move came after Sacramento City Council voted in April to disallow nighttime parking<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trash and other activity reported at rock garden<\/p>\n Jeff Massa is a city park worker who arrives at 5 a.m. to get ready for shifts that begin an hour later. Massa said that when he arrives, six or seven cars can be parked near the Works Progress Administration rock garden in the park.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I come by and I see these people milling around, they\u2019re not teenagers,\u201d Massa said. \u201cSometimes I\u2019ll hit the high beams and they\u2019ll start running.\u201d<\/p>\n Beer cans and cigarette butts get left in the park, Massa said. He said he finds discarded condoms \u201con a daily basis\u201d and the occasional syringe.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of characters in this park,\u201d Massa said. \u201cIt\u2019s getting bad.\u201d<\/p>\n Other people familiar with park haven\u2019t noticed a recent change.<\/p>\n Dale Claypoole is a member of the Land Park Volunteer Corps and participates in cleanup days at the park, helping with gardens that are adjacent to Sutterville Road. Claypoole said he hadn\u2019t noticed more trash than usual in recent months. Nor has he heard safety concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the many, many years I\u2019ve worked there, I haven\u2019t heard anyone come back and comment on their feeling that \u2026 they were unsafe,\u201d Claypoole said. \u201cDoesn\u2019t mean they haven\u2019t been, but I haven\u2019t heard it.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeff Strenk, who has lived opposite the park on 13th Avenue for more than 20 years, said that to his knowledge, crime and after hours activities hadn\u2019t gotten worse in the park. That\u2019s not to say the park doesn\u2019t sometimes bring him other inconveniences.<\/p>\n \u201cMy biggest concern with the park is that on busy weekend days, the music can get really loud and the car noise can get really loud,\u201d Strenk said. \u201cMy windows rattle and it\u2019s miserable.\u201d<\/p>\n But the rock garden might not be the only problem area for the park at the moment. Massa said that a restroom near Freeport Boulevard has its own issues and that bikes and garbage can be found near it.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s like ground zero,\u201d Massa said.<\/p>\n What\u2019s being done to address Land Park\u2019s issues<\/p>\n Aside from barring nighttime parking in the park, the city has also discussed closing some streets in the park to vehicular traffic as part of a two-year pilot program<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe already started moving because we think this is the right thing to do for this community,\u201d Sacramento City Councilmember Rick Jennings said at a Land Park Community Association meeting earlier this year.<\/p>\n Jennings was unavailable for an interview for this story, but Rogers said that he was working on broader plan for the park.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of that plan is to close the gates at night when the park is closed, so people cannot drive in and then have the gates open in the morning when the park is open,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cThere are certain parts of the park where that will make a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n Massa wonders about the new signs prohibiting nighttime parking. \u201cI think the big thing now is, are they going to come in and enforce it?\u201d Massa said.<\/p>\n Rogers, meanwhile, wonders what will happen if the current state of affairs goes unchecked.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people have said to me, mothers and other folks have said, \u2018We bring our kids to Land Park because we don\u2019t feel safe in other parks,\u2019\u201d Rogers said. \u201cSo they bring their kids here. So if this continues, and it continues to escalate, where do those kids have to go?\u201d<\/p>\n
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