Saturday, May 14, 2011

California Park Closures


beginning September 2011, completed by July 2011.
 

From  San Francisco Chronicle/SF Gate 5/14)/11.  ..."Among the popular Bay Area sites that will be closed to the public are China Camp and Samuel P. Taylor state parks, Candlestick Point State Recreation Area and Jack London State Historic Park....The closures are necessary to cover the two-year, $22 million cut in the state parks budget that Brown and the Legislature agreed to in March..... About $75 million has been cut out of the parks budget over the past decade. Deficits forced partial closure of 60 parks and deep service reductions in 90 others over the past two years....Of the 278 parks in the state, 150 have already been affected by budget cuts, including reductions in the number of rangers, lifeguards and janitors. Restrooms, campgrounds, picnic areas and parking lots have been shuttered.....Park staffing is currently at 1979 levels, but the park system has 500,000 more acres and 10 million more visitors a year than it had back then, park officials said. The latest cut would mean the park general fund has been reduced 44 percent since 2006." 

"Database of of proposed park closures",  Inside Bay Area/Oakland Tribune 5/13/11. 

Posted by Kathy Meeh

7 comments:

Sir Farts-a-Lot said...

Now I have a place to farm weed.

Tom Clifford said...

Unfortunately you won't be alone. The state parks will suffer badly from this closure, which will mean that it will cost all of us a lot to reopen them.

Sharon said...

I realize this is about California Park closures, not national, however, who thinks a National Frog Park, might be on the list, if we had one?

todd bray said...

That is a monetary issue Tom as you know to close the parks will ultimately be more expensive than leaving them open. Cutting staffing rather than cutting staff compensation is a short term private business model remedy that does not translate into the public sector. Unfortunately our public sector considers the issues to ultimately be about them. Again. modest compensation reductions of all state staff and employee's would solve the issue but the staff in charge are saving their pay checks at the expense of state employee's and tax payers. No one needs to be let go, no parks need to close, no schools need to suffer cuts, like our city staff and employee's our state staff and employee's need to put their pride aside and have a little bit of empathy for the public.

Anonymous said...

Revenue is 2 billion dollars up. Ca Republicans have stated they want all funds to go to the schools. CTA lost their argument with the public to raise taxes. This can be another ploy to get people to agree to raise taxes. Trend is the public is not buying into their false arguments. Public polling indicats Californians want reform. This war , class war, what ever you want to call it is between the Unions and the Citizens , since it cant be with republicans, democrats hold a overwhelming majority in all levels from governership to local city councils. Demand reform. Reform will prevent job losses and class warfare, which is what democrats want. Demand democrats stop shaking down small and medium size business, which will help create jobs and revenues. Demand it.

Kathy Meeh said...

Anon (235), here's what Los Angeles Times 5/5/11 said about the Republican proposal to put $2 billion toward education. In short "fodder against Gov. Brown's proposed tax increases".

These proposed "increased taxes" include extension of the sale tax (from 2 years ago). I'm for that (as are most Californians surveyed). Unlike many of the Tea Party Republicans we tend to here from, let the Republicans who are not "playing games" stand-up and support funding education, our community, business, and at the Federal and State level increase taxes slightly to the most wealthy who have benefited from 30 years of tax breaks.

Scotty said...

I've explained numerous times why your proposal results in a worse workforce, Todd. I'm curious why you think that you can magically circumvent the most basic rules of economics?