By Thomas K. Pendergast

Subpoenas are on the way to former leaders of the San Francisco Parks Alliance (SFPA) after they found themselves in hot water once again. This time, instead of responding with defiance, the private non-profit completely dissolved itself, leaving about 80 community groups high and dry.

The SFPA was like a bank for community groups to park and manage their money, but by the SFPA’s own admission, money supposed to be restricted for funding these respective projects was instead being used to cover operating expenses.

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office is also launching its own separate investigation.

At a June 5 meeting of the San Francisco Board of Supervisor’s Government Audit and Oversight Committee, District 10 Supervisor Shaman Walton said he requested information and the presence of the nonprofit’s leadership before the committee.

“I want this body and the public to know that none of the requested documentation from the Parks Alliance was ever submitted to my office and none of the staff or leadership of the Parks Alliance is here today,” Walton told the committee. “Again, the Parks Alliance has not been forthcoming or transparent, not only with this body but also with the public. We have no other choice than to call for the full use of this board’s power of inquiry.”

The committee chair, District 9 Supervisor Jackie Fielder, backed Walton on issuing subpoenas.

“This is not the first instance where a City-supported nonprofit has mismanaged public funds entrusted to them and we’re seeing the full extent of that coming to light now with reports of alleged misappropriation of funds by the SF Parks Alliance,” Fielder said. “Unfortunately, this is also not the first time in which advocates and city leaders have sounded the alarm on the Parks Alliance and its potential mismanagement. There are community groups and San Francisco residents that make our neighborhoods beautiful, often completely on their own, without financial help of the City who have relied on the Parks Alliance as fiscal sponsors and are now being left high and dry.

“I will be introducing a motion together with Supervisor Walton to subpoena members of the Parks Alliance: Robert Ogilvie, current SFPA CEO as of three months ago; Drew Becher, former CEO of the SFPA from 2015 to 2025; and Rick Hutchinson, former SFPA board treasurer, and have them produce relevant documents identified in Supervisor Walton’s letter dated May 13.”

Questions about the SFPA’s financial practices have come under official scrutiny before and raised eyebrows.

In 2020, Mohammed Nuru, the City’s former chief of Public Works, used nearly $1 million in donations from various city contractors put into a SFPA account that he used as a slush fund to pay for baseball caps, T-shirts, bandanas and other attire, according to an investigative report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

That same fund paid for custom outfits for Black History Month and Arbor Day, nearly $10,000 for lunch bags during an employee health fair and $30,000 for an employee appreciation picnic. Much of the contributions were from contractors doing business with the City and the checks were not made out to Public Works but instead to SFPA.

In that case, the SFPA itself was never accused of any wrongdoing.

An auditor with the City Controller’s Office, Amanda Sobrepena, told that same committee in 2021 that from 2015 through 2020, SFPA received $11.9 million from multiple city departments.

Contractors and building permit holders made donations to the Public Works sub-accounts at the SFPA, Sobrepena explained. Much of that spending from the sub-accounts were related to “staff appreciation,” including department initiatives with volunteers and merchandise, generally at Public Works’ direction. These sub-accounts really operated like a city account, she said, because invoices were directed and approved by Public Works employees and tracked by both Public Works and SFPA. However, all of this occurred outside of the City’s established financial and procurement systems.

“As a result, they were not subject to the same review and control that would otherwise exist to comply with the City’s accounting and procurement policies and procedures,” Sobrepena said. “This arrangement ultimately created the opportunity for unethical steering of purchases to occur.”

In March of 2021, the SFPA threatened to withdraw more than $2 million in funding for a playground in District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan’s district if she did not recant statements she made when she and District 3 Supervisor Aaron Peskin called for an investigation into the organization’s finances. The playground was scheduled to open in the fall of 2022 and that money represented about two-thirds of the project’s budget, according to the Chronicle.

Chan said in her mind that move just further confirmed suspicions she already had since the Observation Wheel in the Music Concourse area of the park got a four-year extension.

“I recognized that all the revenue, unlimited revenue, was going toward Parks Alliance,” she said. “Why Parks Alliance? Why are they getting that fund? It’s public dollars,” Chan said.

“I think the Richmond Playground threatening letter issued by Parks Alliance, which since then they apologized for the tone and the mannerism, it tells you their thinking and approach more than anything,” she said.

One of those feeling burned by SFPA is Devorah Joseph, who raised funds to renovate the Cabrillo Playground and Dahlia Garden next to it. She said they are out about $9,000, which they had been keeping in reserve for repairs and replacing worn-out items.

“This year I had to replace the fence,” Joseph said. “Every year the fence is damaged, a lot by festival goers trying to get to the flowers, so we had to put up a new fence. This year I decided to get a much heavier gauge fencing material, and so we spent about $1,000 just replacing the fence. (The Parks Alliance) has been really disorganized for a long time. We used to get quarterly statements. That stopped four years ago but last year I specifically asked, ‘How much do we have?’ And we had a little over $5,000.

“Then I got another $5,000. So that was $10,000. I did get paid back for about a thousand, which was for the Dahlia tubers, the welded-wire fencing and fertilizer.”

Meanwhile in the Sunset District, landscape architect Jeffrey Miller has been working on a new playground at Stern Grove now under construction.

“Currently, we’re in arrears of about $35,000 from the Parks Alliance for the work that we’ve done on Stern Grove and another $20,000 that’s in the contract,” Miller told the committee. “This potentially is like a $55,000 hit on our company. Who knows if we’ll ever see it; it’s rather disturbing. I’m just here to say that there’s a real problem here financially, for us, and clearly financially for a lot of these organizations all over the City.”

In the Outer Sunset, at 43rd Avenue and Judah Street, is the Far Out West Community Garden. They estimate they stand to lose about $4,000.

“That money came from donors, garden plot holders’ plot fees, and the remnants of a city challenge grant,” said Doug Jacuzzi, one of the garden’s founders. “We are sad to see the Parks Alliance go. We found the synergistic relationship with the Parks Alliance a good model for the management and growth of the Far Out West Community Garden.

“We believe that the Parks Alliance was a beneficial organization for the City as a whole,” Jacuzzi said. “It is unfortunate that money management oversights are the cause of its demise. From our limited perspective, it seems that the model is good, and that with better/tighter monetary control, another organization could possibly fill the empty shoes PA left behind.”