She was shocked. Jones-Taylor had never seen people living in poverty with little to do. She stayed there for more than 20 years, focusing her work on low-income youth.

This, she said, molded the way she looks at her new job in Oakland.

"I want to prevent kids from going to juvenile hall," Jones-Taylor said. "When kids go to recreation centers, they look at the staff as moms, dads, uncles and aunties."

Jones-Taylor spoke about her experiences this week, as the sun poured into her new corner office in Frank Ogawa Plaza -- where the parks and recreation department moved two weeks ago. She took over as parks director in March.

With a yearly salary between $121,100 and $148,700, Jones-Taylor is working to make changes that residents involved in the parks say they're excited to see. She manages a $29.4 million budget and about 140 parks and recreation centers, and her vision is to transform who the parks attract and how they are maintained.

For several years prior to her appointment, Jones-Taylor volunteered with the Oakland Parks Consortium, an organization that helps set quality standards for the city's parks. She found that recreation centers concentrated on families with younger children, she said. Now, she wants to engage 14 to 18 year olds around Oakland.

"There's not enough activities going on for that age group," she said.

First, she is organizing a program to find kids cutting school and introduce them to the parks. The department is starting the Radical Roving Recreation Team, a group of part-time staff that teaches hip-hop dancing and how to produce music, she said.

The team's work will kick off in July with a portable music studio, she said. They plan to travel around Oakland, set up shop in front of corner stores, driveways -- anywhere youths congregate, she said. She hopes the team will attract kids to the recreation centers, which they can continue to visit if they regularly attend school.

"Some of the youth we're going after are the ones nobody wants to have," she said. "My whole thing is exposing kids to experiences."

Jones-Taylor's administration also marks a change in how the city will maintain parks, park advocates say -- from a system that has degraded over the past 25 years to one that depends more on volunteers eager to improve public space. Working with the Oakland Parks Coalition, Jones-Taylor said, she found that 65 percent of maintenance time was spent removing litter.

Staff, she said, has worked on a call-by-call basis. They respond to complaints, she said, rather than focus on general upkeep.

The youth her department attracts may become future maintenance employees, she said. She intends to start gardening and horticulture training programs for kids. After training, some students could take seasonal jobs with the department, she said.

Better maintenance is what Oakland needs, said Anne Woodell, who served on the parks commission for 27 years. A few decades ago, each park had a gardener. Woodell explained. Now, roaming crews stop by parks, "and you're lucky if they stay for four hours," she said.

And the city needs to attract volunteers to do the maintenance, said Gillian Garro, chair of the Oakland Parks Coalition and a Bella Vista resident. Many of the city's parks and recreation centers have degraded after years of graffiti and neglect, Garro said. The city now depends on homeowner associations, churches and other organizations to help.

"We find that there are a lot of groups that are happy to step into that role," she said.

Since Jones-Taylor does not expect the budget for maintenance to grow anytime soon, she hopes to add income in a different way -- charging for classes.

Recreation centers around Oakland offer free classes -- from yoga and drama to cooking and ballet. And Jones-Taylor said she intends for the city to start charging for at least one class at each center. Her belief is that if the centers offer a class that interests people, they will pay, she said.

"Let's try it and see," she said.

Contra Costa Times
Knight Ridder
(925) 943-8270
www.contracostatimes.com