Voice of OC42%
Santa Ana Community Gardens’ Future Shrouded in Confusion, Transparency Concerns 6%
By Hosam Elattar39% Julie Leopo0%
7/30/2026, 10:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Anecdotal, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 32.8% saturation with 620 hits. Analysis detected 2,803 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,890 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 19.8% and a BS Rank of 6% (21,560 of 22,831 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 94.40% of the article peer group.
Confusion is growing over the future of Santa Ana’s beloved community gardens – which for many residents have become spaces to socialize, cool down, grow fresh food and stay in touch with their cultural roots.
It comes as city council members authorized roughly $11 million in spending cuts to help float the budget, including an over $1.1 million combined to park maintenance and parks and recreation department spending as well as nearly $5 million to eliminate vacant positions and part-time staff spending.
[ Read: Santa Ana’s Bleak Budget Leads to Commission Purge ]
The community gardens are an amenity city management say they won’t be closing to residents after spending cuts and after the former Parks and Recreation director, Hawk Scott, resigned this year.
At the same time, city leaders quietly paused what they’re calling “programming” at the gardens.
“Residents will still have access to plant and maintain the gardens during the current regular hours.
We won’t have any programming like workshops at this time,” City spokesman Paul Eakins wrote in a Tuesday text message, without stating how the decision was made.
Eakins, who didn’t return calls this week and only communicated through text messages and emails, didn’t elaborate further on what he meant exactly by programing.
Officials have yet to publicly make a clarification even as volunteers – who have helped tend the vegetable patches – began raising alarms about the gardens’ future, saying they were told by parks and recreation staff this month the program would be facing drastic changes, maybe even closing to residents.
Elected city council members are raising their own questions on the issue and asking staff to clarify what’s going on after getting calls from worried residents.
City signs posted on the gates of the Jerome Park Community Garden and Madison Park Community Garden and seen Tuesday by Voice of OC seemed to confirm volunteers’ suspicions but Eakins said the postings were made by mistake.
A sign posted outside the Madison Park Community Garden on July 28, 2026.
Credit: HOSAM ELATTAR, Voice of OC
“Due to restructuring of the community garden program, operations will be reduced as of July 31, 2026,” read a sign with the city’s logo tied to the gate of the Jerome Park community farm – arguably the mainstay garden of the program.
“We apologize for the inconvenience.”
The sign outside the Madison Park Garden stated operations there would be reduced as of July 24.
“Those were posted in error and have been removed,” Eakins said in a text message Tuesday about the signs, not elaborating on how such a mistake could be made and avoiding multiple other questions about the issue.
Councilwoman Jessie Lopez, who is running for state assembly, said the city manager has some explaining to do and it wasn’t a decision the city council made.
“It’s obviously very confusing and only the city manager’s office can address who directed the posting of signs,” Lopez said in a Wednesday phone interview
“It’s really disappointing to get all the calls that we’re getting and it’s really frustrating to not be able to answer questions directly because we’re learning about it as the community is also learning about it.”
Councilman David Penaloza, who is running for state assembly against Lopez, said the situation was troubling and he is unclear how the signs went up and he would be talking with staff Thursday to find out what happened.
“Unfortunately, city departments in this city for decades have operated in silos,” he said in a Wednesday phone interview.
Penaloza said he didn’t hear about it until called for questions.
“The fact that I hear it from the media first is also troubling.
When you called yesterday, I had no idea of what was happening.
The community volunteers that volunteer at these gardens could easily call and vet this information so the fact that their first call was to Voice of OC also kind of raises questions as to okay what’s happening here,” the councilman said.
City Manager Alvaro Nuñez did not respond to questions Wednesday.
In an emailed statement Wednesday, Eakins said the city is focused on maintaining the core functions of the parks department amid budget cuts.
“That includes ensuring that our community centers and other facilities, including community gardens, remain open and accessible to the public, and that we maintain clean and safe parks and public facilities.
Santa Ana’s community gardens WILL remain open to the public,” he wrote.
Volunteers & Residents Speak Out
The lack of clarity or explanation, city signs mistakenly put up saying the program would be restructured and reduced and conflicting narratives from city employees and leaders about the garden are raising questions on how exactly the city is being run.
Cynthia Perez, a 34-year-old mom who started volunteering at the Jerome Park community garden before the city took it over, said she was disappointed by the city.
Cynthia Perez and her daughter look out to the Jerome Park community garden on Wednesday, June 29, 2026.
Perez is a longtime volunteer at the Jerome Park community garden.
“I don’t care who to blame or who made these decisions.
I’m not about punishment.
I’m more about can we move forward and find resolutions that are gonna give back and nourish our communities because we really don’t need unnecessary stress or extraction of third spaces,” Perez said.
She also said the confusion is an example of what happens when city officials aren’t creative with the budget and residents deserve more clarity.
“This literally just blew up in a couple of days and this is just kind of a repercussion of how unorganized communication is, how little their connection is to their own community and it’s unnecessary stress for us,” said Perez, who has been volunteering at the gardens for years, in a Wednesday interview.
“Parents are making time out of their day to focus on what we can do to come up with resolutions.”
Rosa Pizano, a Guatemalan American resident and activist who has used the Jerome Park garden for decades, said she was upset when staff had said the gardens were closing and it impacted her profoundly as someone who has been tending for years as a volunteer.
“It is not fair that they [city] fool us or frustrated us, because my heart was very hurt, and I began to cry,” Pizano said in interview in Spanish after hearing they wouldn’t be closing the gardens.
She said the gardens are important to residents’ health and nutrition.
“I have seen many people care for this garden, water the plants, pick up plastic bags and take some harvest home, like Nopales, or make tea from the mint, lemon, there is so much that people take from this garden.”
From left, Gloria Espino, Rosa Pizano and Irene Pimentel gather regularly to visit community gardens throughout Santa Ana.
The three are members of the senior center near the Jerome Park Community Garden.
Credit: JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC
Irene Pimentel, a 66-year-old resident, said it is a place for her and her friends to go and pass the time.
“I got sad because where else are we going to go?
We do not work, we have free days to go to the gardens,” she said in interview in Spanish.
“We cannot be locked up in our home, we would go crazy, this garden motivates us to keep going.”
What Sparked Confusion?
Elected Officials Raise Questions
A planting event at the Jerome Park Garden in 2023.
Credit: JULIE LEOPO, Voice of OC
The confusion also sparked questions from city council members about what’s going on with the gardens.
City Councilman Ben Vazquez said the confusion was sparked when City Manager Nuñez informed the parks and recreation department of their staff reductions and told them to figure out how to manage the program and the department used their given discretion.
He also said council members should have been clearer with staff when they made budget cuts.
“I think we give him clear directions, and sometimes when you think you’re clear, you’re not.
You have to be very specific.
We’re going to reduce the number of staff at the garden but we want the programming to continue,” Vazquez said Wednesday after meeting with Nuñez the day prior.
“We have a big change with the budget cuts, and I think it came from that, and it’s unfortunate the messaging was not clear but hopefully we move forward,” he said.
“This is a blip in the running of the city.”
Parks and Recreation staff aren’t speaking to reporters about the issue, referring questions about the gardens to a city spokesman.
Penaloza said it could be a situation where city management told the department to find places to cut spending and that’s what they decided – noting the vacancy in the park and recreation director role and that it was possibly a decision Scott made before he left.
Penaloza said going forward notices as significant as the ones that went up on the gardens should be vetted by management and that the council as whole is supportive of the program especially in areas surrounded by high density apartments.
Lopez said someone is not taking responsibility for the ensuing confusion that was created.
“Someone is clearly not taking accountability and being honest about what has happened here and my responsibility is to speak with my direct employee, which is the city manager,” she said.
“After all, this is a city manager form of government.
He is the one in his team that issues the directives, that speaks with the department heads and so I need to speak with my employee about what has transpired.”
Lopez also has questions for the city manager on what the programming changes will mean for the gardens that are located in areas with limited open space.
The community garden at El Salvador Park on July 28, 2026 Credit: HOSAM ELATTAR, Voice of OC
“If the city and the city manager’s office needs to make cuts, they need to make cuts somewhere else but not by taking away the very amenities that improve our quality of life, particularly in neighborhoods that have gone without them for far too long,” she said.
The debacle comes after city council members adopted their budget last month, approving about $11 million in spending cuts without ever explicitly discussing any cuts to any of the city’s five community gardens.
Amid discussions on cuts, elected officials opted not to reduce their $420,000 budget for political aides or dial back council members’ nearly $80,000 travel budget.
Some of those cuts impacted parks and the Parks and Recreation department including a nearly $1 million reduction in park maintenance and an over $113,000 cut to overtime for Parks and Recreation related to programs and schedule adjustments.
The biggest cut, however, was a nearly $5 million reduction in vacant positions and their part time employee budget.
Officials also dissolved the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission and four other city advisory boards.
Eakins did not respond to questions on how those cuts impacted the department.
“Just as all cities are dealing with budget constraints, the City of Santa Ana has made strategic budget decisions to ensure our long-term financial stability,” he wrote in a Wednesday statement.
“This fiscal alignment may require a period of adjustment.”
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