The very uncomfortable-looking man below is SF Parks Alliance CEO Drew Becher, who had to squirm Thursday as angry SF supervisors' committee grilled him over how $4 million was misspent, and he claimed he just didn’t know it was happening.
There are no free movies in SF Parks this summer, because the SF Parks Alliance that organized those events has completely collapsed in a financial scandal. The Parks Alliance is not the same thing as the SF Rec and Parks Department, and instead is a private nonprofit that raised money for park projects. And they acted as sort of a bank for small neighborhood and park groups, who could park their money with the Parks Alliance and withdraw it upon request — except that the Chronicle reported in mid-March that the Parks Alliance had blown $3.8 million in other groups’ money on their own operating expenses, and was unable to reimburse those groups for expenses as small as $100.
Since then, the SF District Attorney and City Attorney have both launched investigations into the misuse of those funds, Mayor Lurie pulled all the Parks Alliance's city funding, and the nonprofit went belly-up and closed entirely in June. Meanwhile, jilted neighborhood groups are wondering where all their money went, and Supervisor Shamann Walton vowed to drag in the Parks Alliance's leaders and put them under oath in hearings.
The Chronicle reports that the first of those hearings happened Thursday afternoon at the SF Board of Supervisors Government Audit and Oversight Committee. And they put former SF Parks Alliance CEO Drew Becher, who resigned before this scandal hit the fan in February, under oath about how he could have spent so much of smaller neighborhood groups’ money without telling them.
“This just seems like a bit of a Ponzi scheme,” Supervisor Stephen Sherrill said, before asking the multi-million dollar question “Where is the money now?” Becher’s answer did not seem to satisfy anyone.
“Where is the money now?" Becher answered. "I mean, it’s with other community partners, community projects that were covered that were running deficits, it’s with, you know it’s, it’s — I don’t exactly know where all of it is, but it was spent on operations and park public space-related projects.”
Sherrill pushed on how shortchanged organizations could get their money back from the Park Alliance, and Becher’s answer was pretty unfulfilling on that too. “I don’t know what the process is now that the organization is not viable,” he told the supervisors.
Those who remained at the Park Alliance after Becher stepped down seemed to want to peg him as the fall guy on this. But Becher seemed to place blame on the Parks Alliance’s former Chief Financial Officer Justin Probert, who left his position in February 2024 (and was not present at Thursday's meeting).
“I had no idea that restricted funds were being misapplied to cover operating expenses," Becher claimed. "I relied on our financial team, and particularly our CFO, to prepare financial reports for review.”
The supervisors were not buying Becher’s answers at all, and peppered him with tough questions, until Becker’s attorney stepped in to stop the questioning. “No more speeches,” that lawyer David Callaway declared. “He’s done.”
Supervisor Jackie Fielder continued to make her point that Rec and Park general manager Phil Ginsburg may have known more about these improprieties than he has led on publicly. “Mr. Ginsburg did not tell anyone until April 2025,” Fielder alleged. And some from community groups who lost money insisted that these financial issues were an open secret for a long time.
“I could have told you years ago that quite obviously they were using restricted funds for other reasons, because we could never get our money released to us,” Tompkins Stairway Garden founder Vicky Rideout told the supervisors. “We made the decision in October of 2024 to terminate our fiscal sponsorship agreement with them. I requested a contract terminating it and the release of our funds. That contract was signed by Drew Becher at that time, and we have never received any of our funds. We were terminated as fiscal sponsors, and they kept the money that we had raised to beautify our community.”
Dozens of groups say they’re in the same boat, and lost money that they had raised because of this scandal. The Chronicle reports that those who’ve lost money can file a form before December 1, 2025 to seek repayment, though we'll see if anyone actually gets reimbursed, and where from.
Image: SFGovTV
