Two-Heel Drive

Paul Rogers writes in this morning’s Mercury News that Santa Cruz Assemblyman John Laird wants to fund state parks by adding $10 to California’s annual car-registration fee.

Under his proposal, which is expected to face opposition from Republicans who call it a tax increase, a $10 annual surcharge would be assessed on the registration of all vehicles except trailers and commercial trucks.

In exchange, anyone driving a vehicle with a California license plate would get free year-round admission to any of the state park system’s 278 beaches, parks or museums - from redwood forests to Southern California sand dunes. Parks normally charge entrance fees between $6 to $10.

The proposal would become part of the Democrats’ draft state budget for the upcoming year if it clears a vote today in a Democratic-controlled budget committee, as expected.

Tempting, though it paves the way for using registration fees to subsidize a gazillion other state needs.

Then again, it’s only 10 bucks and my California license plates get me in free.

California’s state parks need a lot more money. Paul Rogers of the Mercury News summarizes the pluses and minuses of several key strategies. One of my copy desk cronies wrote this gem of a headline: How would you feel about ‘Budweiser Beach’? Rogers identifies five scenarios:

All of these factors add up to the situation we’re in now: Over a billion dollars worth of maintenance put off till another time. Meanwhile, parks become embarrassingly tattered and people have an excuse to take their activities elsewhere.

Previously:

• Report on California’s crumbling state parks
• Governor dumps plan to close 48 state parks
• California parks department’s defense of closing 48 parks
• California state parks: more thoughts on keeping them open
• What are we going to do to save our state parks?

External links

• California State Parks Foundation
• Pine Ridge Association
• Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks
• Angel Island Association
• Sierra State Park Foundation

Paul Rogers of the Mercury News documents the decay of the California state parks system, and just how bad it’s gotten. From part one in this morning’s paper:

This Memorial Day weekend, campsites are booked from Mount Shasta to San Diego. But California’s state park system - once considered the best in the nation - is falling apart.

Its 278 parks include priceless locales that define the state’s history and natural splendor: Sutter’s Mill, Lake Tahoe, towering redwoods and “Baywatch” beaches.

Yet throughout the system, sewage pipes are crumbling. Roofs leak and thousands of scenic acres are padlocked for lack of rangers.

If you believe we need state parks, and that we need them not to be tattered embarrassments that horrify the tourists, pick up a copy of today’s paper and read this report — the graphics illustrate the forces that got us into this mess, and the photography shows in stark detail how bad things have gotten.

Part 2 on Monday deals with what can be done about it.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has dumped his plan to close 48 state parks. The Sacramento Bee reports:

Backpedaling from his earlier plan, the Republican governor will not seek to close 48 state parks, ask for early release of 22,000 inmates or give schools less money than they are guaranteed by the state Constitution.

Advocates who were briefed on the governor’s plans late Tuesday, however, said most of Schwarzenegger’s proposed cuts to health and welfare services will remain in a $101.8 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The guy who ran Gray Davis out of town on a fiscal-responsibility platform wants to use future lottery revenues as collateral for $15 billion worth of bonds to close the current deficit. Hmm.

Looks like Henry Coe and Portola Redwoods are in the clear for now. Fees may go up a dollar or two, though.

Vindu Goel, whom I’ve hiked with quite a few times in the past couple years, uses his bully pulpit as Silicon Valley pundit to join the fight to save California parks.

If lawmakers approve the closings, the next logical step is selling off bits and pieces of public land, warns Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, a non-profit group that raises money to help with various park programs.

She points to Schwarzenegger’s recent support for a proposal to build a toll road through San Onofre State Beach in Southern California. Swaying the governor: $100 million offered to the state by the local agencies proposing the highway.

“It feels like things are up for grabs,” Goldstein said. “They’ve cut the sinew and the fat and the skin. Now we’re down to the bone.”

As the kids like to say, that’s just wrong.

With rising obesity levels, the increased onset of adult diseases like diabetes and hypertension in children, and the general stress of our modern work culture, we need our parks more, not less.

But if we value our parks, we have to prove it to the politicians - and ourselves.

Don’t just fire off a letter or e-mail to the governor and your local legislator. It’s a beautiful holiday weekend. Go out and enjoy a park.

And if you’re out at Henry Coe on Sunday, say hello. I’ll be out there voting with my feet.

You go, Vindu!

A PDF from California Department of Parks and Recreation outlines why the parks in question were targeted and points out a few telling details, such as:

• Elimination of public access at the 48 parks will result in a revenue loss of approximately $3.7 million to the State Parks and Recreation Fund (SPRF).
• The $13.3 million reduction and the $3.7 million loss in SPRF revenue, would result in a projected total reduction of $17.0 million in funding for the operation and maintenance of the state park system.
• State Parks has more than 75 million visitors every year. These park closures are projected to reduce the annual visitation by about 6.5 million visitors or less than 10% of our total attendance, meaning most of the system, 230 of the 278 state parks, will remain open and operational.
• In the 1980s, State Parks began deferring maintenance to the system, such things as repairing roofs, bathrooms, roads, fences and trails. Since then, deferred maintenance has continued to grow due to the continued under-funding of the State Parks’ maintenance budget. Today, the deferred maintenance backlog for the system stands are just over $1.2 billion. The annual shortfall in on-going maintenance is $117 million.
• In 1990-91 the state spent $4.16 per visitor to state parks. That figure has continued to drop ever since, with this latest 08-09 budget reduction proposal bringing that figure to roughly $2.80/visitor (in inflation-adjusted 2006-07 dollars).
• Raising fees can produce more revenue, but it also gets to a point of diminishing returns where people stop coming to the system and attendance drops, and revenue along with it. We are near that point today.

So, closing these parks does make it easier to keep the rest open — this is actually a plausible rationale. The billion dollars in deferred maintenance is not pretty, either.

But all this assumes new revenue sources aren’t available. They can be, but not if we assume raising money to support the parks is solely the state’s job.

This article from Capitol Weekly lays out the original proposal. Among the key facts:

• Budget cuts would save $13.3 million — about a dollar for every family in California.
• Closures would shut out an estimated 6.5 million of 79 million annual park visitors — the largest state park attendance in the nation.
• The California Parks Foundation has 90,000 members.

Divide 90,000 members into $13.3 million and you get $147 and change. If every member of the Parks Foundation passed the hat among their family, friends and neighbors and thew in $100 of their own, the shortfall goes away.

What that tells me: if everybody who uses California parks regularly gets busy, gets generous with their time and thinks creatively, we could make a huge dent in the parks funding crisis.

Another interesting link at the Parks Foundation’s site: Henry Coe State Park tallies 34,395 visits a year and takes in $67,344 (less than $2 per visitor — good thing so many people are car-pooling, eh?); at Portola Redwoods, it’s 36,277 visitors and $161,136 in revenue (they get a lot more campers there).

Should we get ourselves worked up over parks that get fewer than 100 visitors a day? Absolutely: as soon as the visit count goes to zero, it’ll be far too easy for the state to succumb to the temptation to start eating its seed corn by selling public lands to raise cash.

The key will be to create partnerships between the state parks authorities and the private organizations that already support the state parks. It doesn’t have to be cash, it could be in-kind contributions of expertise. Whatever it is, it has to keep the parks in the hands of the public.

Rick from Hike Half Dome sent along a note about a message making the rounds advising some general rabble-rousing and attention-grabbing and getting up in the grill of our political leadership. While I’m certainly not opposed to making politicians’ lives miserable, I can’t help wondering: what part of fourteen-billion-dollar deficit is being overlooked here?

Yes, it would take only a pittance in extra taxes to keep these parks open. But each new tax, no matter how laudable the purpose, encourages further taxation in the same way that adding new lanes to the highway encourages more driving. Our state cannot afford to go any further into debt: our grandkids already owe way too much already. We have to find another way.

I think that way lies in the existing volunteer organizations that already support conservation and outdoor recreation. I realize there’s a certain privatization paranoia about going this route: as long as the state owns the land, developers, loggers and solid waste disposers can’t get to it. But a well-motivated corps of dedicated volunteers could raise enough funds — and enough hell — to make sure that never happens.

For awhile I entertained the idea that closing the parks to the public for a few years might not be such a bad thing — certainly the creatures of the woods wouldn’t miss us. Then it occurred to me that hiking, biking and horse-back riding are what keep the trails open. In a couple years the trails will all be grown over and will have to be cleared again.

Furthermore, the existence of unused land will tempt the state to sell some to raise revenue. Most of our parks have stands of timber that would yield a logging bonanza ; perhaps the best we could hope for is an off-road recreation vendor opening the lands to ATVs.

So, the parks have to stay open. The question is, how? And here’s what I want to know:

• What is the Pine Ridge Association doing to keep Henry Coe open?
• Is the Santa Clara County Parks department willing to open its parks trust fund to help out?
• What are the Peninsula Open Space Trust and the Sempervirens Fund (which found $4 million to buy just over 500 acres near Big Basin State Park) doing to keep Portola Redwoods open?
• Can the San Mateo County Parks Department help out?

These are the kind of questions we need to be asking all up and down the state. It’s not enough to needle the Assembly and demand our parks’ funding be restored. Let’s assume the money isn’t there and take matters into our own hands. We have to take an active role in drumming up money the state can’t (or won’t) provide.

I’m sure the money’s out there.

Here’s the letter Rick sent me:

Act now to Save California State Parks!

Dear friends,

48 of our California’s magnificent State Parks are scheduled to be closed to public access. A new state budget bill that is now being considered by the State House of Representatives attempts to resolve California’s 14 billion dollar deficit. If Governor Schwartzenegger’s bill passes, Henry Coe, (87,000 acres, the largest park in Northern
California) Del Norte Redwoods and Armstrong Redwoods (both protecting stands of First-Growth Redwoods) , Tomales Bay, Clear Lake, and a score of other State Parks will soon be closed. The bill calls for closure of 48 of California’s State Parks. The parks would no longer be maintained, and they would be closed to public access. The proposed park closures would save only one tenth of one percent of the state’s budget deficit.

You will all have your own favorite parks.

To see which parks are threatened go here.

Act now to help save our beloved parks!

What you can do:

1) Forward this message to everyone you know who may be interested. Post it on all of your email groups and bulletin boards.

2) Send a Message to Each Representative.You can take action and help in this crisis by contacting your representative for the State Assembly and State Senate. To find out who they are and to contact them, go to this site and put in your home zip code. Click on the representative’s name and that will take you to their official web page. Each page has a “Contact” link easily found on their page. This will take a little more time, but your comments won’t look like a form letter.

3) Send a Message the Easy Way If you do not have the time to contact each representative personally, the California State Parks Foundation provides an easy way to take action. Just go to this site. and fill in the information they request. Please note that you must give out your email and home address, but not your telephone number. You can alter the prepared message to fit your concerns if you want. Also, unless you uncheck the boxes, you will receive information from this foundation.

OK, so doing all this is the bare minimum of action … but do we think the minimum effort will get us what we want?

Excellent suggestions have been pouring in (here’s the link to all comments on yesterday’s post), which has the salubrious effect of sparing me the trouble of having to think up good ideas of my own. So, thanks folks.

A post at the Los Angeles Times travel blog has a few quotes from a state parks spokeswoman who mentions an intriguing detail that’s maddeningly incomplete: some parks will have full closures and others will be only partial, but the list isn’t final. Thanks a heap. A few more thoughtful comments ensue, such as:

It sometimes seems that we only sit up to pay attention to State budgets when specific things that are important to us are threatened. To effectively deny access to public lands is a drastic measure but to propose leaving public lands and facilities under maintained and to give existing staff inadequate support and funds to do their jobs well is something that has been going on for quite a while without much public outcry.

No kidding. Meanwhile, back at home here, Randy L. summarized the rationale for keeping parks open even in tough budget times:

We need to convince the governor and other state officials that the parks are a far greater benefit than whatever revenue they thing they will save by closing them. In terms of value vs. cost, parks like Henry Coe are an unbeatable investment. For hard working taxpayers who endeavor to live a healthy lifestyle they are essential. They provide wholesome positive activity choices for young and old alike, and for families. They provide open space to enhance livability. They provide a place where wildlife can coexist without danger of encroachment from urban sprawl, and for nature to thrive to enhance the quality of the air.

Randy also mentions the the California State Parks Foundation’ Web page where you can e-mail your legislators, based on your address: ga3.org/campaign/KeepStateParksOpen

We can’t forget that that this cut-10-cents-on-every-dollar is essentially a stunt: A sane government doesn’t pull an arbitrary number and say “everybody gets cut by X no matter what.” (Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee offers an excellent overview how our so-called leaders are dancing around the issue of raising taxes). The problem being: regardless of the political motivations, the proposal will become reality if nobody raises a ruckus. 4WheelBob summarized it well:

The other thing - try to offer a solution. It’s not enough to complain about cuts in a few programs. How, from a citizen’s point of view, can less hurtful cuts be instituted elsewhere? Believe me, there’s a lot of politicking and needless expense built into a state’s budget. Don’t mince words, either - if, like me, you consider the park system untouchable, let ‘em know this is an elect - or not - elect point as you peruse your ballot.

Politicians definitely respond to “I’m voting for your replacement if you let this happen.”

As for me, I feel a bit hamstrung because my job at the paper (the full-time one that pays the rent, not the hiking-columnist one that pays for gas) obliges me to stand aside and maintain observer status rather than participant. I’m not going to be the one organizing marches and shouting into bullhorns.

One thing I won’t shut up about, though, is the essential reality that nature — preserved in state parks and other means — is what keeps us alive, and that shirking our environmental obligations is slow suicide. I don’t see any point in compromising on what kind of planet we leave for our great-great-great grandchildren.

That is, save our ability to hike in them?

Is it enough to send pleadings to lawmakers or should we take more direct action?

I’d like to hear other people’s suggestions before throwing any ideas of my own out into the ether.