Cerritos Commission Keeps Park Hours Intact

The Cerritos Parks and Recreation Commission declined to change the current hours of and  at their meeting last week.

The commission was split 3-1-1, with Chairperson Mark Anthony Ruiz dissenting and Nick Kim abstaining. The opening hours for both parks will remain from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

A person who received a parking violation at one of the parks at 3:50 a.m. last year prompted the debate to change the opening time one hour earlier at the two parks. The City took action following a previous city council meeting where they discussed the matter and left it for the commission to decide.

City of Cerritos Director of Community and Safety Services Gregory Berg said that while city report states the L.A. County Sheriff made no arrests last year between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m., he was unable to get specific details about specific parking citations throughout the day because of different accounting methods from each entity. The city operates Liberty Park while the County of Los Angeles operates Cerritos Regional County Park.

“When the Cerritos Sheriff’s issue a parking citation, they’re lumped in with all the city’s parking citations and they’re not tracked by date or time,” he explained to the commission.

Despite the fact that city analysts could not give specific data, Berg left the commission to make a decision.

Many of the commissioners questioned Berg about how analysts collected the data and how to get the information from the City and Los Angeles County.

During the discussion, Commissioner Nick Kim suggested that while some residents have complained to the City Council about people in the park in the early hours of the morning, they shouldn’t be concerned about crime or other problems between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.

“For safety reasons or crime, that issue is more towards [midnight] and 2 a.m.,” he said. “The people who are early birds who work early in the morning and come to the park to exercise, those people I believe are sound people, not criminals.”

However, commissioner Lew Gentiluomo stated that the hours should remain the same.

“They’re there for a reason and it’s to try to keep our parks safe,” he said. “Because one or two people received a citation, I don’t think that’s reason enough to change something that’s been working well for years.”

Despite his support for the status quo, Gentiluomo is more concerned about younger people hanging out at the park in the middle of the night for “illegitimate” reasons than people who are in the park at 5 a.m. for legitimate reasons.