Anchorage parks would trade 32 seasonal jobs for nine year-round positions

Anchorage's parks department would cut 32 seasonal and temporary jobs and add nine full-time ones in 2027, under budget changes the city administration presented to the Assembly on Friday.

The department has been converting seasonal and part-time jobs that sit vacant or can't be filled since about 2021, said Ona Brause, the city's budget director. Parks and Recreation Director Shanna Gamble said the department's Healthy Spaces camp cleanup program had 14 summer seasonal positions, and over the last couple of years it filled only five of them. The budget would turn those 14 into five full-time jobs. "Why should we have these vacant seasonals when we can have year-round?" Gamble said.

Park maintenance would trade nine seasonal caretakers for two full-time ones. In Eagle River and Chugiak, part-time recreation, lifeguard and recreation center jobs would become one full-time recreation specialist.

The trades are lopsided because seasonal positions are budgeted at three-tenths of a full-time job, Gamble said, so it takes roughly six of them to make one full-time position. Brause said Gamble works out the changes "at a net-zero change." Full-time workers can be trained and kept on, Gamble said, which she hopes will bring a little better service and more skilled labor.

"In lieu of having six part-timers, we'll take one full-timer, and it's starting to work," Municipal Manager William Falsey said. He also described how the city handles its seasonal workers: "We do this somewhat Kafkaesque thing of making a number of people quit, leave for two weeks, and then they apply and we rehire them again."

Assembly Chair Anna Brawley said she co-sponsored an amendment to this year's budget that made the same kind of trade. Gamble said the department is now "scraping the last of the barrel."

The department's full-time count would still jump, from 95 to 121, mostly because 16 Healthy Spaces positions, including caretakers, foremen and a superintendent, would move onto its budget, and one more would lead a new community engagement and events section. About $1.9 million from a newly implemented Healthy Spaces surcharge would pay for them. "So it is a $2 million increase with a $2 million revenue," Brause said.

The department's proposed spending would total $30.7 million, part of Mayor Suzanne LaFrance's $692.5 million operating budget. The changes, laid out in a revised budget page, aren't in the budget book yet; Brause said they would go into a substitute version. The Assembly holds a public hearing Nov. 4 and is scheduled to vote Nov. 17.