EDITORIAL: Why the no-shows in Belle Haven? EDITORIAL: Why the no-shows in Belle Haven? (April 13, 2005)

In its struggle to balance the budget last year, the City Council forced cuts and changes on recreation programs in Belle Haven that residents and others said would deal a devastating blow to the Menlo Park neighborhood, particularly the children who used the Onetta Harris Community Center.

Now the council is hearing that the fears of residents are coming true, in the form of drastically reduced participation in many of the recreation programs, including pee-wee basketball, football and cheerleading. Football enrollment is down 60 percent, and cheerleading, nearly 75 percent.

Part of the problem was moving a popular Onetta Harris supervisor, Aaron Johnson, from Belle Haven to the Burgess Recreation Center, and reducing the time he and other staff members had with youth programs.

Belle Haven resident Matt Henry, a Planning Commission member, told the council in February: "Poorer staffing leads to less attendance at programs, and less attendance is used as a justification to cut programs."

This would be a terrible outcome for Belle Haven, where children will have fewer alternatives for healthy after-school activities if the recreation programs suffer more cuts.

But while staffing may be a significant part of the problem, last week the council discussed another big issue -- the language barrier and surge in Hispanic households in Belle Haven. About 73 percent of the families in Belle Haven are Hispanic. African-Americans, once a majority in Belle Haven, now make up only 16 percent of the population.

Latinos are "not participating much," staff senior supervisor Aaron Johnson told the council last week. Another senior supervisor, Michael Taylor, suggested that a strong Latino role model and bilingual staff members could help attract more participation.

Clearly, it is time for a lot more outreach to the Latino and African-American communities in Belle Haven. The city should move quickly to address its mistakes of last year when it cut back the Belle Haven programs to save money. It is not acceptable to have major recreation facilities in Belle Haven nearly empty, while those elsewhere are thriving with strong attendance.

The city needs to undertake a strong bilingual outreach program to attract the Latino community. As suggested, the city should look for Hispanic parents and other role models to coach athletic programs. And the city should consider bringing Aaron Johnson back to Belle Haven, where he would be in a much better position to rebuild the lost relationships.

Most important, the council needs to commit to finding the revenue in next year's budget to immediately halt this disturbing trend. The city may need to actually increase funding over last year to bring kids of every ethnic group back to Belle Haven's recreation programs. Whatever it takes will be money well spent.

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