It took a year, but people who’ve been fighting the Parks Departments over its public process are finally feeling vindicated, though not quite satisfied.

A report released last week from the City Auditor on how Parks solicits public input on major renovations cited a number of problems in one project that was chosen for a case study — the controversy over installing artificial turf at Ballard’s Loyal Heights Playfield.

The auditor found that Parks followed its stated public input policy, but took certain steps, the report says, “that adversely affected the public involvement process at Loyal Heights.” Among them, Parks staff told members of the project’s citizen advisory team that they could not question putting in artificial turf, failed to finish or present the team’s report to the Board of Parks Commissioners before it voted on the project, and did not properly manage contentious meetings.

After the Park Board voted to move forward with the artificial turf, the report also states that former Parks Superintendent Ken Bounds, who retired earlier this year, created a special reconsideration period that few members of the community knew about.

Nearby neighbors objected to artificial turf, saying it would clog the field with sports games and cut passive uses of the park. Soccer and other sports league members countered that Seattle rain makes grass fields unusable most of the year. The issue was one of a number of controversies the Parks Department faced last year, two of which led to lawsuits over plans at Gas Works and Occidental parks.

In the wake of the controversies, David Della, chair of the Seattle City Council’s Parks Committee, requested the audit. In Phase 1, the auditor looked at Parks’ general public involvement practices, issuing a report last fall that called for 16 action steps such as providing histories of every project, hiring professional facilitators for meetings, and taking out newspaper ads to inform the public of project meetings.

Parks spokeswoman Dewey Potter says many of the steps have already been taken. But she says the issue at Loyal Heights — which is currently in the process of having its artificial turf installed — was largely one of an error in wording in the Pro-Parks Levy measure that funded the project and two others like it.

Instead of specifying artificial turf, Potter says, the Pro-Parks Levy merely stipulated “ballfield improvements.”

It’s an explanation that worries Loyal Heights resident Pat Devine. She and her partner, Jim Anderson, fought the artificial turf and say Parks still doesn’t see anything wrong in its past actions.

“It really made me feel that our work was a positive thing,” Anderson says of the audit’s conclusion. But, “This shouldn’t be the end of this. It should be the beginning of a new era of creating a responsive Parks Departments and a responsive Parks Board.”