Could an Ombudsperson Help Mediate Denver Parks & Recreation Conflicts?

Pickleball. Dogs. Skateboarding.

These three things may seem like fairly mundane aspects of daily life, but they've become points of contention in Denver in recent months. The Department of Parks & Recreation and residents can't seem to agree on what should be considered public fun and what could be deemed a public nuisance.

During an April 19 meeting over noise in the parks, recreation advocate David Riordon shared his idea for how to settle disputes: Appoint an official Parks & Recreation ombudsperson.

Like any ombudsperson, that individual would investigate complaints and act as a liaison between the city and its constituents, working to resolve conflicts. Others who were at the meeting were in favor of the idea.

“There is no real people's voice for Denver Parks & Rec,” Riordon says, adding that an ombudsperson "could have the ability to take care of individual questions, concerns, comments.”

Riordon came up with the idea through his own experiences advocating for better skatepark infrastructure in the Mile High City. When he heard about a plan to build a skatepark at the abandoned Kenwood Dam spillway in southeast Denver, he got involved — but found that Denver officials weren’t open to his input.

He wanted the city to give permission for skateboarders to DIY the park — bringing in their own features while the city still had some measure of control. But that wasn’t going to happen owing to liability issues, city officials told him.

After several heated discussions, Riordon offered to meet with Scott Gilmore, deputy executive director of Parks & Recreation, over coffee to hash out their differences. That meeting never happened.

A week later — on February 16, 2022 — Riordon submitted a proposal to create a Parks & Recreation advocate position to the Parks & Recreation Advisory Board, which comprises reps appointed by every city council member and the mayor.

“The general public should be given the ability to make suggestions, complaints, and feedback,” Riordon wrote. “The Advocate will then administratively investigate and make a report back to the PRAB as warranted or refer the matter to the appropriate governmental offices within Denver Park and Rec or elsewhere.”

Riordon says he never received a response to his suggestion.

He'd initially used the term "advocate" because he knew of the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent arm of the Internal Revenue Service that helps people stand up for themselves in tax-related matters. Riordan has since refined the concept to an ombudsperson, who could deal with interpersonal conflicts between Parks & Recreation and citizens as well as with systemic issues, he says.

“Maybe that ombudsman does a periodic report: 'We dealt with 300 complaints. Of those 300 complaints, 275 were resolved without any further need. Twenty-five went to the Denver Police Department for resolution. One resulted in an arrest,'" he suggests. "Right now, the public just doesn't have a direct voice into Denver Parks & Rec. If you really want to get going at it, you almost have to somehow get yourself in front of Gilmore or [Deputy Executive Director John Martinez].”

Riordon thinks those two already have enough on their plates without being the first line of contact when people have issues.

But Gilmore says that adding an ombudsperson is not something the department plans to do do. Instead, he points people with complaints to the PRAB or to the city’s existing mediation services.

“I have quite a few of these people that they love their Denver parks,” he says. “That's amazing. … A lot of them really believe that we could be doing a better job.”

Though Gilmore admits there’s always room for improvement, he says he's proud of the department and hopes people understand that change takes time, especially if the department is going to get it right. He’s open to mediation, too.

The City of Denver contracts with Community Mediation Concepts, a nonprofit that helps people resolve conflict through conversation, offering services similar to those an ombudsperson would provide, according to Gilmore.

He recently worked with a volunteer group at the Berkeley Dog Park to figure out a solution to conflict stemming from decisions Parks & Recreation staff had made that allowed the volunteer group to break park rules. When Parks & Recreation realized the error and told the group they had to stop doing what they’d been doing, the group requested mediation.

And it worked, says Steve Charbonneau, executive director of Community Mediation Concepts. He’s been mediating conflicts in Denver for decades, including brokering what was then the largest contract of its kind between thirty neighborhood associations and fifteen temporary-labor agencies in 1999.
Community Mediation Concepts is still at it today, and the City of Denver is its largest contract, with about 500 referrals from the city going to the nonprofit each year.

“Those range from neighbor-to-neighbor conflicts to businesses and neighborhoods,” Charbonneau says. “We do civilian-police complaint mediation. We do the historic designations. We get referrals from neighborhood inspections, from animal protection.”

The list includes Parks & Recreation issues. Community Mediation Concepts negotiated the dispute between the city and Arslan Guney after Guney was criminally charged for drawing one-by-one-inch squares on the basketball court at the Central Park Recreation Center in order to make it easier for people to set up temporary pickleball courts.

“Anybody can reach out to us, and we're going to talk to them about it,” Charbonneau says.

When a dispute arises, an expert from Community Mediation Concepts talks with both sides separately to figure out issues, then brings them together to talk out a resolution. As long as everyone stays honest and engaged, it works, he says.

“The people that are involved in that dispute, they are almost always the best equipped to come up with good solutions and good outcomes,” Charbonneau explains. “We all come to conflict with our own perspective, and we think our perspective is the right perspective, the only valid perspective. My job is to help you realize that, yes, your perspective is valid for you, but other people can have a different perspective that can be equally valid for them.”

In his lengthy career, not much has changed, Charbonneau says, though people are more resistant to seeing the perspective of others these days.

It’s his job to help them through that. He often starts by reminding people that being angry is bad for their quality of life. He’s interested in community mediation with large groups of people, so if someone were to reach out about pickleball, he’d be the one to answer.

Pickleball is a hot topic in the city right now after Parks & Recreation closed the popular Congress Park courts for good because of noise complaints from neighbors. The move stung, since picklers have been clamoring for more courts in the city for over a year.

Gilmore isn’t sure whether mediation would help with the Congress Park situation.

“They are set on just keeping pickleball at Congress Park, which is not something that we are going to move forward with,” Gilmore says. “I'd go meet with them and tell them the same thing I'm telling them now, which is we're not going to rebuild the courts. But that's what they want, and so that doesn't serve any purpose. It doesn't help anybody.”

But Gilmore is talking with citizens about what to do about pickleball more generally through a new advisory group specific to pickleball. According to Gilmore, the group has already helped clarify the rules for play at the Northfield Athletic Complex, and Parks & Recreation has ordered $20,000 of equipment such as paddle holders and windscreens to improve play at existing courts.

Charbonneau says he knows mediation would work for pickleball if the city and its residents were ready to come to the table civilly — no ombudsperson needed.

“I have absolutely no doubt that if we got the right people in the room, we can figure this out,” he says. “There's no question in my mind.”

Still, Riordon hopes that whoever becomes Denver's next mayor will look into creating such a position.

“I’m sure this is pie-in-the-sky,” he laments. “I'm not here to cause problems. I'm the type of person that sees something and wants to better it, to help out.”