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One-Time Maintenance Deferrals Keep State Parks Open
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One-Time Maintenance Deferrals Keep State Parks Open
By Linda Fridy
A plan to defer maintenance and equipment purchases will keep state parks open for the current fiscal year, pushing back the need to close as many as 100 sites to meet $14.2 million in budget cuts.
The plan calls for saving $12.1 million by reducing ongoing maintenance through the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, 2010, and eliminating all major equipment purchases, such as vehicles.
The remaining $2.1 million will come from service reductions. These efforts include reducing the days of a week that a park site is open, closing certain sections such as a campground loop, and extending seasonal closures.
The parks affected by these cuts and the specific types have not yet been identified.
Santa Cruz County is home to 14 state parks, from the small Santa Cruz Mission to the state's first park, Big Basin Redwoods.
About half of county's coast is state parkland.
"Working closely with my Departments of Finance and Parks and Recreation, we have successfully found a way to avoid closing parks this year," said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a release announcing the plan. "This is fantastic news for all Californians."
The reaction from state park supporters was less enthusiastic.
"While the governor has found a clever way to get political cover on this issue, it's not clear that this plan won't actually leave Californians with just as limited access to their state parks as if they had been fully closed. The 'found money' here is from having less lifeguards on state beaches, not maintaining restrooms, not staffing parks for health and safety standards, etc.," responded the California State Parks Foundation, the nonprofit entity that supports state parks.
Buying Time
State parks have been a popular target of the governor's for budget cuts. His budget proposals for the last two years have included major reductions that were later eliminated or reduced by the Legislature.
Even the current plan reflects one-time savings and state parks still face $22.2 million in ongoing reductions, noted parks director Ruth Coleman and state finance chief deputy director Ana Matosantos.
With such regular threats to keeping parks open, support for alternative funding has grown, and parks advocates may bring a vehicle license fee to the voters in November 2010.
A version of this plan was first introduced by then-Assembly budget chair and local representative John Laird in 2008. It calls for an additional fee to be added to vehicle license charges, in exchange for which state-registered vehicles would get free day admission to all state parks.
Such a plan has worked in other states.
A similar proposal came to a vote this spring in California's Assembly and Senate, but did not garner Republican support required to reach the two-thirds threshold a tax needs to succeed.
To bypass this roadblock, the California State Parks Foundation is researching the possibility of putting an access pass plan on next year's ballot.
It estimates that the program will generate $360 million in annual revenue, which would remove the park system's need for state general fund money and protect it from future budget cuts.
A decision on the ballot initiative is expected late this year.
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