August 12, 2004

Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services boss works hard to provide
better services for San Jose residents

Sara Hensley has more than 20 years of experience

Editor’s Note: The following is the fifth article in an ongoing series about the city’s departments and appointed officials. Next Week: San Jose’s Director of Housing Leslie Corsiglia.

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

Sara L. Hensley’s first childhood memories are of walking around a lake with her brother and sister spending leisure time with their beloved godmother around the swing sets and the old Army tank at the only park in the small town of Charleston, Ark.

“We loved to go,” said San Jose’s director of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services. “That’s what parks and recreation is all about.”

The single, 47-year-old Hensley runs one of the city’s largest departments with that wholesome recollection in mind and early experiences that shaped her attitudes about life.

The animal lover has seen the benefits of recreation in her life and now wants the city to more aggressively reach its residents by turning them from sedentary to active beneficiaries of the services the department has to offer.
She strongly believes that the department’s services promote health, add to life expectancy, reduce stress and contribute to the psychological well being of residents by helping them have a balance in their lives.

Reminiscing about her late godmother, Hensley said while she never spoke to her about the connection between recreation and emotional health, she understood it early on and laid the foundation for her lifelong career.
“A community is not a community unless it offers amenities that help people have the quality of life that they need,” she said. “We like to think of ourselves as a unique offering.

“What would the community be like if it didn’t have any parks, any trails, any programs, or any place to have social interactions?”

With her southern accent, spunky attitude and outgoing personality, Hensley oversees nine regional and 146 neighborhood parks, working with the city’s General Services Department to maintain them.

The department is also responsible for the city’s three golf courses—Los Lagos, Rancho del Pueblo and San Jose Municipal—run by contractors hired by the city; and administers the Healthy Neighborhoods Venture Fund, the Community Action and Pride Fund, the Community Development Block Grant, the San Jose Beautiful Grant and the San Jose Bringing Everyone’s Strengths Together B.E.S.T. Fund.

Hensley supervises approximately 475 full-time employees and several seasonal workers during the summer and is responsible for a $58 million operating budget and a $122 million capital budget.

She also oversees the operations of 24 community centers, 13 senior centers and 13 youth centers. The centers are operated in partnership with many community groups and organizations such as the Girl Scouts of America, theater and arts groups and neighborhood associations.

Hensley, who has more than two decades of diverse parks and recreation experience, also manages six city-owned and five school district pools and a total of 3,574 acres of parks and open space. She’s also responsible for the management of the Roosevelt Roller Hockey Rink, 27 trail systems, three dog parks (Miyuki, Watson and Saratoga Creek), the Stonegate skateboard park at Gasman and Tuers roads, and five future skateparks.

One of the programs that Hensley is excited about is the “Volunteer San Jose” program, which encourages community participation and the coordination of volunteers to enhance civic awareness. It’s designed to effectively match individuals, businesses and other interested parties to a variety of volunteer opportunities in their neighborhoods. Some of these opportunities include adopting a park, helping needy seniors, reading to children at the library, joining the effort against graffiti, working with animals and coaching youth sports teams.

Hensley, who owns two miniature collies, is also responsible for the city’s Division of Animal Care Services, which will be opening a new animal care and services facilities on Monterey Road tentatively scheduled for Sept. 26.
The division, under Deputy Director Jon Cicirelli has been partnering with the Humane Society of Santa Clara Valley while the center is being built.

Hensley also oversees the Community Facilities Development Division that takes the capital dollars and helps to work to get those projects built, such as trails, under the director of Scott Reese.

Maria Hurtado, and Joan Carrico oversee the department’s Community Services Division.

Hensley is also assisted by Albert Balagso, assistant director of the department; Joe Cardinalli, deputy director of the department’s Administrative Services; Julie Mark, deputy director of the parks services; Scott Reese, deputy director Planning/Facilities Development Manager; and Cynthia Bojorquez, assistant to the city manager for the Neighborhood Development Center.

Hensley praised San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzales, city council members and voters for their overwhelming support of measure P, the $228 million San Jose Safe Neighborhood Parks and Recreation Bond approved in 2000 to improve neighborhood parks’ safety and expand recreation opportunities for children, families and seniors, by installing lighting, reconstructing deteriorating playgrounds and restrooms; preserving open space; constructing trails; constructing new recreational sports facilities; improving community and senior centers; and constructing improvements to regional parks, like Happy Hollow Park and Zoo, located in Kelley Park on the corner of Story and Senter roads.

As a result of the measure’s passage, the department has begun renovating several parks and facilities that were antiquated.

Hensley said the demands to keep up with renovation schedules have been taxing for department and public works employees who are concerned that because of the economic downturn, the facilities being built and improved will have difficulties being maintained.

With a $6 million department budget reduction across the board, Hensley praised her employees for “rising to the occasion” by reinventing the way they do their work to save money and continue to staff the facilities and keep most of them open.

Last year, the department began conversations with its commissions and committees, such as the Parks and Recreation Commission, the Child Care Commission, the Community Development Block Grant Steering Committee, the San Jose Beautiful Steering Committee, the Senior Citizens Commission, the Helping Neighborhood Advisory Commission, Helping Neighborhood Venture Fund Committee, the Youth Commission and the Early Care and Education Commission.

Together they conducted a meeting in December of 2003 asking everyone to give the department their top parks, recreation and neighborhood priorities.

“We’re a department that’s evolving every day. We’re looking at how we can better do business. We never sit back. We always look forward and think how we can do business differently, better, smarter and with less staff.”

The department’s biggest challenges, Hensley said, are limitations to what it can offer San Jose residents. Another concern is how to keep the department’s employees upbeat knowing how important they are in the overall city effort to provide park, recreation and neighborhood services requiring them to often work complicated schedules.

“I know I’m constantly looked at as someone who’s always asking for more,” she said. “It’s hard. You know how hard they’re working and yet every time I’m asking for more. You want to be able to say to them that there is relief in sight and there is…. It’s frustrating because you want things to be better.”

The most rewarding aspect of running the department is the connection it makes with the community and seeing someone succeed because of a recreation or neighborhood service.

“I never go home and say, ‘Oh, gee, I’m glad I got my paycheck today.’ I say, ‘The things we see are the ones that really touch your heart.”

One example of such a non-monetary payback was how at a recent budget hearing a group of seniors expressed gratitude for a program that has benefited them or when a youth group created its own after-school program to prevent adolescent delinquency in their neighborhood. “That’s powerful. That’s our most important compensation,” Hensley said. “Without those kids at the swimming pools or those family members at the parks we wouldn’t have a job. It’s a special feeling knowing that we’re making a difference in their quality of life.”

Hensley was hired by the city two years ago, on Aug. 5, 2002. Prior to coming to San Jose, she had served as director of parks and recreation in the 500,000-population city of Virginia Beach, Va. She received her bachelor’s degree in physical education and health and a master’s degree in education and recreation administration from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. She worked as a graduate assistant in college learning more about intramural sports where she met a professor who sparked her interest in parks and recreation and working with the public.

She has also served as director of recreation in Champaign, Ill., and as a recreation program supervisor for the Austin Recreation Center in Austin, Texas.

Since 1989 Hensley has been a certified park recreation professional after passing a difficult national accreditation exam offered by the National Recreation and Park Association. “My work is my life,” she admitted this past week.

True to her words, colleagues and friends say she never misses a weekend or evening park, recreation or neighborhood function. “I would like to be a couch potato, but I enjoy doing this,” she said. “It’s challenging, but I absolutely love it.”

For more information on the Department of Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services, 4 No. Second St., Ste. 600, San Jose, Calif., 95113, call (408) 277-4661, visit www.sanjoseca.gov/prns, or e-mail Hensley at sara.Hensley@ci.sj.ca.us.