People will not be allowed to hang out in Santa Barbara parks after sunset or be at playgrounds without children under a package of policies proposed by the city's Parks and Recreation Department.

Although Jill Zachary, the city's parks and recreation director, never specifically mentioned homeless people and vagrant loiterers, the ordinance is designed to keep undesirable behaviors out of park areas.

"We want them to be safe, clean and usable, and we want to have stewardship of our natural resources," Zachary said.

Unlike the 1950s and '60s, Zachary said, "communities use parks in a very different way today."

City parks have been under fire in the past year, ground zero for a political and possibly legal battle over health and public and safety.

A year ago at Plaza Vera Cruz on Haley Street, a 4-year-old boy was pricked by a discarded hypodermic needle that he found on the park's play structure.

The boy had to undergo a series of drug treatments to prevent HIV and hepatitis, and the family contacted attorney A. Barry Cappello.

Councilman Jason Dominguez has also been a vocal advocate for the cleaning up city parks and eliminating bad behavior. He frequently video records people drinking, smoking and engaging in potential illegal acts in city parks.

The city's three-member Ordinance Committee made up of City Council members Randy Rowse, Oscar Gutierrez and Kristen Sneddon, voted in support of the changes, which will now go to the full City Council.

The proposals call for parks to open at sunrise and close at sunset, as determined by the National Weather Service. Park exceptions would be Skofield Park, Franceschi Park and Hilda Ray McIntyre Park because they have staff caretakers who live on site.

In addition, the city wants to ban adults from playground areas, unless they have a child 12 and under with them. The city has about 22 playgrounds in its city parks.

The changes also call for new standards regulating barbecue pits at city parks. The city has 14 parks with stationary barbeques for a total of 66 individual barbeques and five large barbeques in group picnic sites.

The city has no rules for bringing barbecues to parks. Under the proposed regulations, the city would allow portable barbeques/grills and camp stoves that were stand alone, enclosed, self-contained units, and at least six inches off a surface.

They would be prohibited in Parma Park and other high-fire hazard areas.

Gutierrez said he supports the changes, even if he has some concerns.

"I do have some reservations, being someone who grew up in the area, where we were very crammed into our living quarters," Gutierrez said. "We needed areas where we needed to be outside our dense living situations. Some of my fondest memories are being in the park after sunset, looking at the stars and so forth."

Sneddon also said she hopes the sunset closures don't unfairly punish people.

"I have a lot of fond memories of being in parks," Sneddon said. "I am going to trust that in those evening hours, unless there's a problem, that we are not going to have park police, but we are going to have parameters."

— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) . Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.