SAN JOSE — With nearly one in five city parks falling below safety and cleanliness standards, the San Jose City Council on Tuesday looked at ways the city could increase revenue to fix them up, including a potential bond measure next year that would be funded by a parcel tax.

City administrators in a report outlined three options for repairing the parks to varying degrees if the city can secure millions of dollars in new funding.

Mayor Sam Liccardo suggested bolstering revenue for park improvements by considering a new tax. Councilman Johnny Khamis, who’s expressed concern with new taxes, called for a more measured approach — requesting a list of projects that would benefit from a potential park bond.

“The concern is too many taxes. We have passed numerous taxes in the past four years — from Measure AA to Measure ZZ,” Khamis said. “I definitely want the parks to get back up to standard, but we need to look at programs the parks department is funding that aren’t yielding the anticipated results.”

To evaluate park conditions, San Jose uses a five-point ranking system called “Park Condition Assessments” every year. The analysis includes turf appearance, picnic areas, playgrounds, sports fields and courts, restrooms and walkways.

An acceptable ranking is 3.0, according to the city report, and 37 parks are failing to meet that standard. The city’s average for its 197 parks was 3.4 — up slightly from 3.3 last year, suggesting most parks are doing well.

But city leaders say San Jose faces serious challenges in maintaining and improving parks and trails: Limited staffing, aging infrastructure, damage from the recent drought and a backlog of improvement projects. The 2016-17 infrastructure backlog for parks, community centers and trails is estimated at $259 million, the report said, and parks maintenance staffing has a high vacancy rate of 14 percent.

San Jose officials outlined three scenarios to fix up city parks with additional revenue — all would require additional funding, ranging from $1.8 million to $15 million a year. The plan requiring an extra $1.8 million would bring all city parks up to a standard 3.0 ranking, repairing the 37 below-standard parks. Another option, which would require an additional $3.5 million a year, would improve the city’s overall average for all parks to a 3.5 score. That plan would benefit 62 parks.

A final option would cost $15 million more a year — the most expensive scenario — and would improve the overall average to 4.0 and fix up 171 parks.

Councilmen Donald Rocha and Sergio Jimenez recommend the city move forward with the option requiring $3.5 million a year to improve 62 parks.

“Too many of our city parks are held together by bandages and adhesive tape,” the duo wrote in a joint memo. “We have several irrigation systems so dilapidated that they include subsystems operating on 9-volt batteries. We have sports fields impacted by gophers and ground squirrel holes, making it difficult to use them for active recreation. We have sport court surfaces that in some cases are almost unplayable.”

Liccardo suggested the city look at options for placing a park bond on the ballot next year to pay for park repairs. He asked that city staff also prepare a list of projects that could benefit from a potential park bond — including repairing crumbling irrigation systems at city parks.

“With all the urgent needs in the city, it is hard to imagine how we solve this problem without some source of new revenue,” Liccardo wrote in his proposal. “We don’t need to decide now whether we actually want to put a measure on the ballot, but I do think we need to ensure that staff has the direction they need to start investigating that option.”

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According to the city report, parks officials spend nearly 8,000 hours on unplanned irrigation repairs. The irrigation system at Penitencia Creek Park, for example, is more than 30 years old and required 320 hours of repair in one year.