Park rangers are citing responsible dog owners at Victoria Manalo Draves Park while open drug use continues fifty feet from an elementary school playground. We are asking the City of San Francisco for a sensible policy on both.
Send the letter — takes 60 seconds→For years, a self-organized community of neighbors has used the unbooked corners of Victoria Manalo Draves Park to exercise their dogs. We pick up after our animals. We pick up other people's trash. We work around the baseball field's actual schedule. The arrangement has been quiet, functional, and entirely cooperative.
In recent weeks, that has changed. Park rangers have begun issuing warnings and citations to dog owners — while open drug use continues within sight of the Bessie Carmichael Elementary School playground. When one ranger was asked about the drug use, his response was to ask whether 311 had been called. It has. Many of us have called. Repeatedly.
Being told to file a ticket — by the uniformed ranger standing in the park — while being cited for a dog playing on an empty ballfield is the kind of inversion of priorities that erodes any trust residents have left in city services.
This is not a "competing priorities" problem. This is a city employee, on the clock, choosing in real time to enforce against the people picking up dog waste while ignoring people smoking drugs in front of children. There is no reasonable framing in which that is the correct allocation of ranger time.
The broader context matters too. SoMa has very little open space. The transit rules for pets are, charitably, unworkable — off-peak only, leashed and muzzled, one per vehicle, on your lap or under the seat. The city has made driving impractical and rideshare expensive. Residents who play by the rules and adapt have very few options left. Victoria Manalo Draves has been one of them.
The field is fully enclosed. The community already self-coordinates around bookings. A formal policy would let neighbors use the space they already use — without the threat of fines for doing what every reasonable observer agrees is harmless.
Drug use within fifty feet of a schoolyard is not a 311 problem to be shrugged off — it is exactly what park rangers exist to address. We're asking for a clear directive that ranger time at this park is prioritized accordingly.
Form letters get pattern-matched and counted as one. Personalized letters get counted as constituents. Take 60 seconds to tell them your address and how you use the park — that one detail is the difference between a number and a person.