City Councilor Ron Trujillo pledged to reconsider a plan to build rental homes for city police officers and other city employees in city parks after a contentious meeting Tuesday with south-side residents.

Most of the 50 people who attended the meeting indicated they want more police officers in their neighborhoods, but not at the price of giving up precious parkland.

"Why take valuable open park space to build new homes as opposed to possibly looking at homes that are for sale all around?" asked Carolyn Agard, whose question drew the first of several rounds of applause.

"Caretaker housing ... is a fabulous idea," she said, "but do not take one inch of park space. We fight for that."

Lee DePietro of the city Department of Housing and Community Development began the early neighborhood-notification meeting by explaining how it originated a year ago with a City Council resolution calling for building affordable rental housing for police officers, firefighters, park workers and other city employees in city parks.

The first three parks proposed for units are Candelero Park, Ragle Park and Franklin Miles Park, all in District 3. When DePietro said the sites are not used for recreational purposes, the crowd hissed and began to turn hostile.

David Pease, who lives on Brillante Lane near Candelero Park, objected to municipal employees other than police officers living in the three-bedroom houses that would rent for about $675 a month. He said this could lead to councilors letting their relatives rent the cheap housing.

"We have a housing crisis in this country," Pease said. "There is plenty of available housing. The city can just buy those houses in the neighborhood."

Police Chief Eric Johnson said the program not only allows officers just out of the police academy to live in the city, but also provides a deterrent to crime. He said when he started working with the city police, he lived in a unit at Piñon Elementary School. After the program was discontinued and he moved elsewhere, he said, vandalism increased at the south-side school. Johnson said about half Santa Fe's officers commute to work from out of town.

When the chief's comments failed to convince the crowd, Trujillo stepped in. "We had a shooting last year," he said. "There were children playing in that park. That's my concern. Gang problems have gotten out of control here in Santa Fe. Graffiti has gotten out of control here in Santa Fe."

But when Trujillo suggested the caretaker program would turn the corner on crime in the parks, the crowd began to jeer him, leading him to ask, "Can we keep this civil?"

Mike Levin, who lives on Ardor Street, questioned building two rental units in Candelero Park on the site of two tennis courts the city quit maintaining more than a decade ago. He said the sites on a hill above the park would mean the police cars would not be visible from the park, so there would be more deterrent in resurfacing the tennis courts so people could play on them again than building new houses there.

Parks Director Fabian Chavez responded that the city quit maintaining the Candelero Park tennis courts because it is more cost effective to maintain tennis courts when there are five or more together. He said the plan for Ragle and Miles parks calls for building rental units in parking areas near the back of the parks. Those areas are "blind spots" that have become havens for the homeless, drug use and other illegal activities, he said.

But some who attended the meeting indicated they think the fear of crime is being oversold as a reason for building houses in parks for police officers. "There's not very much crime over there because we're always out there patrolling," said one resident near Candelero Park.

Joanna Ipiotis Romero lives on Camino San Patricio and was one of only two people who supported the caretaker plan. The other, a man who sat with Romero but declined to identify himself, said the "negative tone" of the audience "puts city officials on the defensive."

But after less than an hour, Trujillo called for a show of hands, then promptly reversed his stance.

"What I'm going to do, I'm going to go back, talk to my colleagues on the council and see if we can look at another place to put this," he said. "As I'm looking at this, the neighborhood does not want this. That's what it is. You guys have spoken."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.