Field Day

The city's rush to expand the soccer program has left a similarly bitter aftertaste with a number of parents and volunteers. Adrian Musil, a coach at Southwest Park, wrote Mayor Lanier an angry letter after promised uniforms failed to materialize and other snafus led some of his kids to drop out. In his reply, Lanier promised Musil that Bill Smith would look into the matter and respond to him "in detail." The coach never heard from Smith. "I'm not getting any results at all," Musil says.

The department's reputation as unresponsive has spread outside the city limits. Pete Smith, grants administrator for the Texas Forest Service, has all but abandoned trying to help fund urban forestry projects after several frustrating experiences. "All of the program development projects started within the past few years by the Parks Department have been dropped for one reason or another, including a grant to add a senior forester to their staff," Smith wrote a local nonprofit. "We have focused our energies of late to developing the nonprofit segment of the community because the Parks Department has shown little interest in technical or financial assistance."

Even if the Parks Department were to deteriorate into the laughingstock of its worst years, Lanier's investment in Houston's parks will still have restored a measure of credibility to a system that had been considered one of the nation's most neglected. But the decision to keep the department a political agency run by a political appointee comes at a cost. All those millions spent on no-bid contracts, for example, might have been stretched a good deal further. And parks advocates lament the departure of longtime employees who have retired in disgust or who, like Lalitha Raman, were forced out. "It's sad," says Gene Hill, who himself retired after the golf-course privatization collapse and the punishment of Raman and Roy Witham.

Not only might much more have been accomplished by a professional director with a vision, but the department's budget overruns and internal conflicts leave Lanier's precious programs vulnerable after he leaves office.

"When [a program] is politically driven," says area youth soccer leader Les Haulbrook, "you always run the risk that when the politicians change, the program dies."

The long-term view isn't Bill Smith's concern, however. When Lanier steps down, Smith will probably follow. And when he does, as with most good hirelings who faithfully carry out orders and take the heat when it comes down, there will probably be a nice government or contracting job waiting for him.