CityofSantaBarbara
By the City of Santa Barbara
The City of Santa Barbara Parks and Recreation Department has completed a project to install fitness equipment in Parque de los Niños. The project aims to provide new recreational opportunities within the small lower westside neighborhood park.
A new multigym, designed for all fitness levels, includes eight exercise stations to offer a full-body workout and can accommodate up to 5 users simultaneously. Exercise Stations include a high pully station and a low pully station with an adjustable weight stack, a chin-up bar with an assist function, a dip station with an assist function, an abdominal vertical knee raise station, an adjustable back extension bench, a calf raise station, and a plyo box. The multigym features instructional placards with visual examples of suggested workouts and QR codes that can be scanned from a smartphone for more detailed instructions and how-to videos.
Two cardio climbers, which mimic climbing a set of stairs, allow users to focus on strength training or cardio. Users can customize their step height based on their fitness level and adjust their workout intensity by increasing or decreasing their pace.
In addition to the new fitness equipment, the project included the installation of a new drinking fountain with a water bottle filling station and sidewalk repairs.
Funding for the project came from a Community Development Block Grant. These grants, issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, provide federal funding for projects that aim to improve the quality of life for neighborhoods with low and moderate incomes, as identified by U.S. Census data.
Parque de Los Niños is on the Westside, between 500 block of W. Cota and Coronel Sts., at 520 Wentworth Ave. I had to look it up and figured I’d save others the trouble.
yes, its a little strip of grass and iron fence along Wentworth. Otherside of the fence is the train tracks. It’s just past the Ortega Foot Bridge.
Folks, this isn’t something worth navigating around town to see lol….it’s literally junk.
Seems our current city council has a huge spending problem. wasting funds on this, when it could have gone to much more needed neighborhood improvements as well as their new $11 million State street underpass renovation. Yeah $11 million of your tax dollars funding an underpass that is perfectly fine and not in need of any repairs. $11 mil could be used in so many other places in town. Oh hey….what about fixing the Castillo underpass? Not close enough to the tourists eh? Thanks…
This was grant money so I’m guessing they couldn’t just redirect it to anything they wanted. Not all money is the same color in government.
these are in my neighborhood, installed two months ago. hard time getting access to it due to the dozen or so little kids playing on them unattended. The stair thing is pretty weak, makes a lot of noise and doesn’t move fluidly, it ‘jogs’ like it needs to be greased. There is also a lot of stairs 1/4 mile away at SBCC. The best thing about the set up is the military press and upper body, but you can’t control the tension (even though it says you can, you can’t). It’s basically about 15 lbs so you have to do a LOT of reps. We were super excited when they were installing them, but they aren’t that great. Mostly now just used by kids to climb on. The equipment at the other field on Cabrillo are great, wish they would have installed those types here, and not these cheap ones.
Seems about right – another SB City fail as a whole. Waste of taxpayer dollars.
Not at all. Providing the public with exercise equipment that is accessible to all is hardly “fail.” So it’s not the best, but if it gets people out moving that’s a win.
Sac, this is literally down the street from me. no one uses it. its a huge waste. it was installed two months ago. its very visable to the locals here, its unwanted/needed.
The Eastside Yanonali “neighborhood” Park, including the toilets, has been blocked off to the neighborhood for most of the summer as the city makes concrete walkways where there used to be dirt paths. Very hard on the neighborhood but par for how the city does things! Will the new fitness equipment described here also be installed on the eastside?
its not worth it….trust me. the funds would be better used elsewhere in your neighborhood IMO. this equipment is barely ok. very cheap.
Interesting, Z! But we don’t have a choice. It’s such a pity that what was a gentle park with a kids’ section at the end, should get apparently state-of-the-art pavement! The grassed area under the oak trees that was good for picnicking, sitting or just being has been fenced off all summer. The old guys, regulars to the park, bring their own table and sit outside the fence. The homeless, also regulars, probably use the not-so-great outdoors for their business. Exercise equipment, apparently, is going in next to the community garden. (The best exercise, say most, is walking … on grass or non-cemented ground.) But the City has a grant; the district councilperson is silent; and, of course, the money has to be spent!
Oscar is the councilmember for this park, who is the member for the park you’re talking about? He does some good things on occasion for us, but this equipment is cool and all, but really unneeded and just a bad spot for it. it’s a really small park, for kids. the equipment is really out of place there and the kids just see it as somehting new to climb on. we went by there last night and tried again to use the stair climber thing….oh wow that thing is awful and loud and the tracks aren’t smooth so it doesn’t slide very well up and down. if they had installed equipment similar that they have at the baseball field off of Cabrillo, it would have been much nicer IMO. I know i sound like a whiner here….i do, but its just a waste of funds that could have been better used IMO
sacjon
Grant money from the federal, state, local government comes either from taxes or debt. Either way, it is tax payer funded. Coastal California sends more tax dollars to Washington DC than it gets in return through grants and services. So your argument is that we should not buy quality equipment or that regardless to quality and cost effectiveness we should never question the purchasing choices made by city parks and rec? If not, why not?
“Is there anything at all you cons support using local tax dollars for? Every. Single. Article. about anything gets the same complain from the same people – “they’re wasting our tax dollars.”-”
I like parks and I like the idea of kids playing, exercising in parks and adults exercising, playing with their kids. The nuance that you missed was that both Zerohawk and I’d rather have spent Cabrillo field levels of cash for good equipment than cheap bad equipment… or then perhaps leave out the equipment for now, put other amenities, come back to it later.
“So, I put forth to you and the others: What would you approve your taxes being spent on locally?
As I said above, I like parks, National to local and kids. I want transitional housing, shelters and the funding for them to help people with children who have recently fallen into homelessness. I want to help others as well, but families, single parents, single women are particularly vulnerable to others on the streets. I support funding for voluntary sober living facilities for the people who want to get clean, and additionally would like to develop a voluntary choice, paid work program similar to the WPA for the freshly sober. I want funding for non-voluntary sober living facilities for those whose addictions have put them into our correctional system. I am old fashioned and believe that people in correctional facilities should be directed into corrective activities and am agreeable to funding rehabilitative measures. I dislike prisons, but realize some people need a “time out” so the rest of society can stop worrying about the rapist who was climbing in windows like the Night Stalker.
My question for you would be: Why do you rationalize money wasted by citing nebulous good intentions?
Rhetorical question with answer following:
Doesn’t everybody know it is always better to buy 2 high quality, high utility products than it is to buy 4 of marginal quality, marginal utility? Answer? No, and they never will if no one requires them to learn. It is like buying a dozen pair of socks for some absurdly low price. They immediately fail. Some will tear, others will not stay up etc etc. and quickly you still have a dozen “socks” that really are not socks, because they cannot perform as a sock but are OK to use as a rag. Better to have bought 2 pairs of socks for the same price and have two pairs of socks that function as socks…. oh sorry I forgo,. it was a grant. Never mind. Completely validates the bad choice
EDNEY – thanks for answering. As to the quality of the equipment, I don’t know. All you and I know is that Zerohawk didn’t like it. As such, I can’t agree that it’s a waste or a “failure” as Dr. Deletion likes to call it.
Orvgull was clearly speaking to the near impossibility of redirecting money outside the scope of a grant, and also the need to spend the money in a way that achieves the scope as outlined in the grant request. Seems like all the more reason to purchase wisely, to get the best bang for the buck
Stuff no one will be using except for some kids hanging on it? Nah, that’s a ‘lose’ in my book.
What part of “de Los Ninos” don’t you understand?
so you think the name of the park dictates who can or can’t go there? LOL ok….anyways….wrong. the exercise equipment is for adults. these are not kids toys or rides. the kids have a full and somewhat new (5 years old) playground a few hundred feet away on the other side of the park. clearly not in your neighborhood or you’ld know this….
DOCBASIC – really? An effort to improve peoples’ health (whether used or not is irrelevant) is a “lose?” Seems like a physician would be supportive of efforts like this.
Nope Sac, not at all. I support things that are well thought out for the good of the community, and this ain’t one of em! Go try it out and report back if you like or don’t, as one of our previous posters has already done. Kids don’t need machines like this! Silly. These are made for adults dude. Seems obvious looking at them.
” Kids don’t need machines like this!” – They weren’t meant for kids. Did you read the article? So Zero didn’t like them. And? Have you asked those who use the park whether they like them? A lot of assumptions and just contrarianism here.
What part of paying $10,000’s of dollars for “cheap” fitness equipment that can only be used for a$1000 equivalent jungle gym makes financial sense? Although to be fair, most in home fitness equipment turns into towel and coat racks you can buy at Ross for $10. At least at home you control the decision to buy “cheap” or quality, so if you buy quality or cheap and use it as a hat rack that’s on you. We count on city employees to make sound purchasing decisions. They get paid to deep dive into researching the equipment, they already had examples at Cabrillo field of stuff that actually works. Lets be honest about employees and people in general. Some are high achievers, most are OK, some are not. Simply being a City of SB employee doesn’t elevate the level of achievement or competency and it doesn’t diminish it either. Municipalities primarily use one tool, seminars (training), to increase, improve competency and they reward attendance at these seminars with certificates, proclamations of competency, pay raises, absent any verifiable standard because its “pass/fail” and nobody ever fails. The purchase of this equipment so far looks like a financial competency fail, but no one is allowed to say so by the hive minds who reflexively defend everyone in the public employee union
@ Sacjon. WHERE do you think “Grant money” comes from…. ? They are TAXPAYER FUNDS with a different earmark, usually referred to as “PORK”.
LMAO!
ENDEY – as ORVULL already said, it’s grant money. This wasn’t a City effort to waste your precious tax dollars.
Is there anything at all you cons support using local tax dollars for? Every. Single. Article. about anything gets the same complain from the same people – “they’re wasting our tax dollars.”
So, I put forth to you and the others: What would you approve your taxes being spent on locally?
In Uruguay there are installations of about 10 machines in most neighborhoods and they are installing stainless steel versions beach side. They actually get quite a bit of use which is heartwarming.