9. Parks and Recreation

The office of each Supervisor helps constituents in dealing with Los Angeles County de- partments. The Grand Jury interviewed staff members in each office. Those directly involved with aiding constituents appear to be knowledgeable and dedicated.

Each supervisorial office enters complaints and requests into the Constituent Relationship Management system (CRM). Routinely, all correspondence regarding the case is recorded in this system. Thus anyone in the office has easy access to the information and can continue processing the case. When a conclusion is reached, that information is entered into the sys- tem. This allows generation of a report listing cases that have been open too long. A disad- vantage of the system is that it can be cumbersome. Requests not requiring follow-up are of- ten not recorded. 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT 55 BOARD OF SUPERVISORS REQUEST AND COMPLAINT PROCEDURES

There are a variety of ways to contact a Supervisor’s office: phone, letter, and email/web. Some of the other methods of making requests or complaints are fax, walk-in, board meeting, and at a community meeting. Letters are the best way to contact the Fourth and Fifth Dis- tricts. For information on the frequency of contacts through each source see Table 1 below. Table 1 Source of Contact by Supervisorial District4 (Oct 2011-Sept 2012) Source District 1 District 2 District 3 District 4 District 5 Total Phone 1106 739 702 384 2931 Letter 76 249 148 *281 858 1612 Email/Web 331 483 133 1170 2117 Other 227 170 25 79 501 Total 1740 1641 1008 *281 2491 7161 *The Fourth District office provided CRM data only for requests submitted through letters. These tables were produced from data furnished by each District using the CRM system. The tables of the submitted data are in Exhibits 1-5. Exhibit 6 contains two tables submitted by the Fourth District. With the exception of actual data for letters received and entered into CRM, all other “data” are estimates which are vastly out of range from the CRM data pro- vided by the other offices. Through communication by a staff member of the Fourth District the Grand Jury learned that only information received by letter was available in CRM.

Another way of looking at the contacts is monthly, as in the table below. A quick review in- dicates no apparent seasonal trends. Table 2 Contacts by Month4 2011 2012 Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Total District 1 169 165 121 113 131 116 166 187 173 152 158 89 1740 District 2 66 99 105 144 132 140 156 167 163 138 151 180 1641 District 3 60 51 65 101 102 95 96 94 117 97 58 72 1008 District 4* 33 11 17 30 13 46 24 21 26 25 27 8 281 District 5 283 213 189 179 231 186 198 173 138 187 260 **254 2491 Total 611 539 497 567 609 583 640 642 617 599 654 603 7161 * Fourth District—Office provided CRM data only for requests submitted through letters. ** Fifth District—September data was collected in 2011. In interpreting the above tables, note that only requests requiring follow-up are entered into CRM. Requests that can be satisfied immediately are usually not recorded. Phone requests are routinely under-reported. District data may differ because of these reporting issues as well as demographics and geography. Each Supervisorial District Office furnished data for these tables in response to a Grand Jury request. 56 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT BOARD OF SUPERVISORS REQUEST AND COMPLAINT PROCEDURES

All of the Supervisorial districts have web contact forms on their websites. The Grand Jury was particularly impressed with the First District’s web form, which repeated the entire re- quest on submission. This allows the constituents to review their request and save it for their records. Figure 1 Sample Web Contact Form Figure 2 First District response when form is submitted. 2012-2013 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY REPORT 57 BOARD OF SUPERVISORS REQUEST AND COMPLAINT PROCEDURES

To maximize the use of the Supervisor’s office for requests, a constituent should: a. Determine if the problem is with a County department. b. If it is difficult to determine who to contact and the constituent suspects that the ap- propriate agency is a county department, the office of the supervisor is a good re- source to help you determine who to contact. c. Contact the appropriate county department and attempt to resolve the problem with them first. d. If the problem has still not been resolved the constituent can contact the office of the their supervisor for help. Responses are required from: