The Office of the City Auditor recently completed a periodic performance audit regarding the funding and maintenance priorities of the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation.

Filed in February, the audit found improvements had been made within DPR — which has a current operating budget of nearly $120.6 million — but noted data related to spending on individual city park sites on Oahu was lacking.

This performance report was deemed a five-year follow-up to DPR’s original audit, issued in June 2020, during then-Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s administration.

First requested by the City Council in 2019, that review determined DPR “lacked sufficient policies, procedures, and consistent staffing to ensure that parks are maintained properly and equitably.”

“As a result, the department did not have critical quantitative performance measures to effectively manage city parks, struggled to ensure that maintenance efforts were performed consistently and equitably, and supported a maintenance program that was reactive, rather than proactive,” the 2020 audit states.

It noted nearly 14% of ground maintenance staff positions were unfilled in fiscal years 2018 and 2019, “which adversely impacted the department’s ability to sufficiently maintain city parks.”

The 2020 audit also found “insufficient park maintenance cost data hampered park management and transparency.”

“More importantly, the department was unable to effectively manage park maintenance because it did not have critical information needed to analyze resources allocated at the park level,” the audit states.

Other more visible problems — like vandalism — were apparent at city-owned parks, too.

From the 2017 to 2019 fiscal years, “the city spent nearly $770,478 for security guard services at parks and a total of $624,039 to repair vandalism. In that same time period, repeated vandalism costs totaled $59,265,” the audit states.

Vandalism, the audit asserted, was “inaccurately reported and costs may have (been) understated.”

The 2020 audit also claimed DPR “did not sufficiently track financial data” of its capital improvement program, or CIP, projects.

Based on this lack of coordination and transparency, there was insufficient accountability for projects that were not completed even though the City Council approved funding, the audit states.

The city auditor found that from fiscal years 2015 to 2017, an average of 31% — $13.9 million — of executive branch CIP projects did not have any record of expenditure in CIP financial reports. Likewise, an average of 56% — $49.8 million — of Council-added CIP projects did not have any rec­ords either, the auditor determined.

Ultimately, the 2020 audit offered nine recommendations to DPR:

>> Establish policies and procedures to track daily park maintenance efforts.

>> Establish quantitative, preventive standards for park facilities.

>> Bring ground maintenance staff fill rates to 90%.

>> Establish a methodology to identify resource allocation at the park level.

>> Collect expenditure and resource allocation data at the park level and use that information to improve park management.

>> Conduct further analysis before expanding park security.

>> Find alternatives to decreasing vandalism in parks.

>> Document coordination with the city Department of Design and Construction for CIP projects.

>> Issue an annual report on the status of all approved CIP park projects.

Earlier this month the city auditor completed its new follow-up audit.

“We found that six recommendations are completed, two are in-process, and one recommendation is not started,” Troy Shimasaki, acting city auditor, wrote in a Feb. 10 letter to Council Chair Tommy Waters.

Recommendations that remain “in-process” include staffing and status updates on CIP park projects.

“In 2020, the department indicated that staffing levels for DPR ground maintenance was at an 85 percent fill rate,” the new audit states. “Mass interviews was a successful program for the department in filling groundskeeper positions on a timely basis. DPR reaffirmed its commitment to achieving the goal of a 90 percent fill rate.”

DPR reported in January 2024 that about 80% of ground maintenance staff positions had been filled. And mass hiring events successfully filled 25 critical positions from the 27 candidates who had been issued conditional offer letters, the audit states.

The audit also found that in fiscal year 2024 DPR started to track four of its 92 CIP park projects on a quarterly basis.

“While the quarterly tracking of a few CIP projects is a step in the right direction, it falls short of the comprehensive annual reporting of all park CIP projects intended by the recommendation,” the audit states. “We consider this recommendation in-process.”

DPR, the audit noted, should continue to issue reports on approved CIP park projects and add more parks to the reports.

With regard to more vexing issues at city-owned parks — such as vandalism — the audit found DPR instituted a so-called park ranger assessment project in late 2022.

Funded via federal COVID-19 money, the park ranger program — consisting of five staff — aims to promote voluntary compliance with park rules and regulations, measure the effectiveness of education, and civil enforcement as a deterrent.

The new audit said park rangers “have begun collecting data through site observations conducted at the various city parks.”

“Although the focus has been on commercial activities, the project intends to expand into other areas such as education and security enforcement,” the audit states. “We determined that this recommendation is completed.”

As far as park vandalism, the audit found that DPR “explored alternatives via the Adopt-a-Park program and the launch of a new, comprehensive volunteering platform, E Alu Pu Kakou!”

“Recognizing the (Adopt-a-Park) program’s outdated structure, DPR requested $408,823 from (federal COVID-19 funds) in March 2022, allocating a portion of these funds to modernize program materials, policies, and communication strategies,” the audit states.

Since the reactivation of Adopt-a-Park, volunteer numbers have steadily increased. “With these measures in place, we consider this recommendation completed,” the new audit states.

Out of the nine recommendations, the latest audit asserts DPR failed to start one.

“We found that while DPR continues to collect expenditure and resource allocation at the park district level, it does not collect or report that data at the individual park level,” the review states.

In a Feb. 6 written response to the draft audit, DPR Director Designate Laura Thielen generally thanked the city auditor for recognizing the agency’s steps toward progress since 2020.

Thielen disagreed, however, with the one recommendation marked “not started.”

“DPR found it is possible to collect park-by-park expenditure data for capital improvement projects, as those expenditures are isolated to work at a single park,” she said. “However, due to the need to operate efficiently, it is not really possible to collect operating expenditures on a park-by-park basis. The wide-scale operations require staff and specialized equipment that service multiple parks.”

Thielen said DPR “respectfully encourages future inquiries to separate operating expenditures and look at different ways to determine if there is equitable allocation of resources across the island.”

“We will continue to examine different means of measuring equity across communities on our island, although we do not anticipate getting to the park-by-park level,” she added.

BY THE NUMBERS

From the 2017 to 2019 fiscal years, the city spent approximately the following:

$770,478

Security guard services

$624,039

Vandalism repair

$59,265

Repeated vandalism costs