Parks funding should be locally based
ON THE STATE PARKS
Mark Dillen
August 1, 2012
Shortly before her resignation amid charges of budgetary mismanagement, the head of California's state parks system lauded the public-private partnerships that have kept some of the cash-strapped parks open. "We have re-energized the people who love parks, and they are stepping up and contributing to parks in all sorts of ways," Ruth Coleman told reporters in June.
It soon became plain that Coleman "re-energized" people in ways she had not intended. After it was reported on July 20 that some $54 million had been on hand in two state parks special funds - but not publicly listed - politicians and activists quickly called for and got Coleman's resignation.
But the newfound funds are but a temporary reprieve for California's 278 state parks. As organized, it takes $517 million a year to run the parks. In 2011, the Legislature cut the budget by $11 million. In 2012, it authorized another $22 million cut.
Even with the additional funds, the parks has only postponed its day of reckoning.
Part of the problem lies with mismanagement and a bloated and inflexible park system bureaucracy. For example, it should be possible for a park to have some local income stream that it does not have to turn over to Sacramento. It should be possible to run parks with a network of local volunteers, part-time paid local workers and seasonal maintenance personnel.
Another part of the problem lies in the quick-fix relationships that Sacramento has encouraged with corporate donors. Such an example was on display last weekend at Fort Ross State Historic Park when it celebrated the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Russian settlement that briefly flourished there.
The bicentennial was attended by the Russian ambassador and consul general, and hundreds from the Russian American community in California, but no elected state official.
In June 2010, the state had signed with Renova, a Russian conglomerate, an agreement that gave the corporation a leading role in determining how the 3,000-acre park would be managed.
The agreement said, in part: "...with the approval of the State of California, the Renova Foundation will suggest and implement programs and projects that it finds best fits the park's long-term goals and development, in coordination with the California State Parks...".
And, while Renova's representative could boast at the bicentennial event that it had made $1.7 million in improvements to the old Fort Ross stockade, there is no public record of how the state (or who in the state) approved or coordinated these expenditures.
There was no discussion of what the state had done or is prepared to do to keep the park open. Indeed, the park has been closed, except for weekends, for a year.
Support for local parks has to be locally based and somehow locally paid for. If long-term corporate funding for parks is uncertain, long-term funding from Russian corporations is questionable.
Mark Dillen has a public affairs consultancy in San Francisco. These are his views and not necessarily those of the Fort Ross Conservancy, which he advises.