(Cross-posted from The Clade, Community Environmental Blog)
Though it likely won’t get much press play aside from brief mentions tacked on to coverage of his current proposal to completely de-fund the state’s welfare program, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing to cut $213 million out of the state parks’ budget over the next two years, almost certainly forcing the closure of many of California’s 279 state parks.
The San Francisco Chronicle quotes Parks spokesperson Roy Stearns as saying four-fifths of State Parks in California – at least 223 parks – may face closure.
The plan, as it now stands, is to cut $70 million of the $150 million the park system receives from the state’s general fund in fiscal year 2009-10, which begins July 1. The rest would be cut out in the 2010-11 budget.
Eliminating general fund support for the parks would mean that virtually every employee would be laid off.
“When you add up the money in our general fund, it almost exclusively goes to pay people,” Stearns said. “If you eliminate that money, you lay everybody off, so there is nobody left to run parks. If you have nobody to run parks, you have to close them.”
California’s state parks system is the most biologically diverse in the US, covering 1.4 million acres of the state, including about a third of the state’s coastline. Biomes as varied as marine tidepools, old-growth redwood, desert limestone caves, fan palm oases, coastal rhododondron “hells,” oak-chaparral savanna, and alpine conifer forests are represented in the park system, as are some of the last remaining acres of Central Valley riparian forest and one of two major northern elephant seal rookeries in the world. The parks stretch across 812 miles, from Pelican Beach on the Oregon Border to Picacho on the Colorado river near Mexico.
The system also maintains seven State Vehicular Recreation Areas. It is unknown whether any of the SVRAs would be slated for closure. If they are, frustrated OHV users would likely turn their attentions from these sacrifice areas onto less-devastated lands. A similar scenario could occur with snowmobilers barred from the agency’s 19 “SNO-PARKS” in the Sierra Nevada.
The proposed cuts come in the wake of California voters’ rejection of a handful of band-aid revenue-enhancement initiatives last week. The vote pushed a projected $15 billion deficit to $20 billion. Tax cuts supported by Schwarzenegger have reduced state revenues by more than ten billion annually since 2004: a significant portion of the current deficit comprises interest payments on debt incurred in previous years as a result of those cuts.
From Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks:
Watch how the next move will be to privatize these parks via “foundations” that’l of course want to develop “some’ of the property to “save” the rest…condos on Angel Island? Yes we can!
Can we develop a “collaborators list” of all Democrats who enabled Arnie during his tenure as the worst governor ever? Pleeeeeeeze?
Like gregdewar, I see this as a backdoor way to allow development in and around the parks. I’m sure a lot of rich people would love to have 2nd (or 3rd or nth) homes on the coast.
It’s also an attack on the concept of public space.
Since many parks are an important factor for the local economy (like the Hearst Castle), it could make sense to allow neighboring cities, businesses and the counties collect funds to keep their parks open via special temporary assessments. But that would probably take too long.