7 ways to pay for great state parks

[Source: Arizona Republic Editorial] – The ominous clouds hanging over Arizona State Parks need to start raining money. Parks managers struggle to protect valuable resources with no money from the General Fund. Unique remnants of Arizona’s heritage have lost dedicated money streams meant to protect them.

At risk are playgrounds for urban Arizonans and sources of tourism for rural residents. At stake is the chance for your children and grandchildren to travel through time from cave formations that began 200,000 years ago to prehistoric Indian ruins to a Spanish presidio to a territorial prison — and wrap it all up by waterskiing across a man-made lake.

What’s at stake is something irreplaceable and beloved. “It’s time people got their dander up and told the Legislature this is one thing that touches their lives,” says Ken Travous, former executive director of Arizona State Parks.

Here’s what people should tell lawmakers:

Restore the State Parks share of the Heritage Fund. In 1990, voters approved $10 million a year from Lottery revenues for parks. During the recession, lawmakers took that funding. Several attempts to restore it have failed at the Legislature. It’s past time to give it back.

Restore the authority of State Parks to spend money raised from gate fees, gift shops and other money-making enterprises. Park managers used to put increased revenue to work for the parks. Now they need legislative authorization to spend the money the parks make. Beginning in 2003, that enhancement fund was swept by lawmakers and used to supplant General Fund appropriations.

Encourage innovation and resource development through parks’ concessions and development. Parks Director Bryan Martyn is looking at a plan to contract with a single concessionaire for all the state parks. It could result in more investment in the parks if the private contractor serving big money-makers, such as Lake Havasu, also is required to develop resources in less-visited parks. The State Parks Board needs to carefully scrutinize any contract to make sure it serves the public’s best interest.

Recognize the need to create additional sources of permanent dedicated funding. A 2009 Morrison Institute report put the cost of operating and maintaining the parks at $40 million to $44 million a year. The current budget is half that. In addition, the parks have at least $80 million in capital needs. The idea of a surcharge or voluntary donation on vehicle registration has been floated — and rejected by lawmakers — since 2009. It is a painless way for people to add $5 or $10 every year to benefit state parks.

Dedicated means dedicated. Protect funds that benefit the parks from legislative raids or sweeps.

Restore the authority of the State Parks Board to hire and fire the parks director. That position became a political appointee with 2012 changes in the state personnel system. The director now serves at the pleasure of the governor. The parks board lost clout. The director lost the independence of being insulated from a governor’s whims.

Face facts. “No state parks system in the United States pays for itself from earned revenue,” according to the Morrison Institute report, “The Price of Stewardship: The Future of Arizona’s State Parks.” Parks need more than they get from Arizona’s Legislature. They deserve more.

Arizonans demonstrated their support by establishing the Heritage Fund in 1990, and they reiterated that sentiment nearly two decades later when a Gallup Arizona poll released by the Center for the Future of Arizona found that “the state’s natural beauty and open spaces are seen by citizens as our greatest asset.”

It’s time to stop stiffing state parks.

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WHAT YOU CAN DO

Arizona State Parks are a resource for today and a promise for tomorrow. But short-sighted funding decisions imperil their future. You can help change that.

  • VISIT. Arizona’s state parks offer dazzling natural wonders, family recreational activities and authentic windows into Arizona’s history and prehistory. azstateparks.com
  • BE A CHAMPION. There’s an election coming up. Ask candidates for state office how they plan to support Arizona’s parks and let them know you want this to be a priority issue.
  • GET INVOLVED. More than a dozen parks have volunteer “friends” groups that provide fund-raising and other services for their chosen park. For information on joining or starting one: azstateparks.com/volunteer/v_foundation.html

Arizona State Parks Foundation is a non-profit that engages in advocacy, fund-raising, and other support. Visit their website at arizonastateparksfoundation.org  The Arizona Heritage Alliance is a non-profit that promotes and protects the Heritage Fund and its goals: azheritage.org

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ABOUT THIS SERIES

Arizona State Parks are a valuable resource in great peril. Stripped of funding during the recession, they struggle without state money and stagger under deferred maintenance. Yet they offer open spaces and outdoor recreation for a growing urban population and an economic engine for rural communities. Popular with the public, but lacking political support, funding solutions can help the parks deliver on their remarkable potential.

State parks, a vision now out of reach

[Source: Arizona Republic Editorial] – The bulldozers were a distant rumble when the push began in 1973 to create Catalina State Park north of Tucson. It took another decade before the land could be acquired and the park dedicated by then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt.

The land was remote then. Its 5,500 acres of foothills, canyons and streams lie between Tucson and Oracle, near the Pusch Ridge Wilderness, where the Coronado National Forest climbs up into the Santa Catalina Mountains.

The park, dotted with 5,000 saguaros, is so rugged that desert bighorn sheep were relocated there. More than 150 species of birds live within its boundaries.

Today, the park is anything but remote. A bustling shopping center sits across from the park entrance. Development tickles the boundaries.

Without the vision of state leaders 40 years ago, this pristine piece of Arizona could be covered with houses and 7-Elevens today.

Today, creating a Catalina State Park would be impossible. Buying the land “would be out of reach,” says Ken Travous, who was executive director of Arizona State Parks for 23 years. “It was almost out of reach then.”

Catalina draws a wide variety of visitors even on a weekday. Campgrounds are full and horses wait in the corrals at the equestrian center.

The value of this lush, open desert in an increasingly urban landscape far exceeds dollars and cents. The wisdom of those who preserved it sings on the wind through the needles of a saguaro: Prescient. Far-sighted.

As Arizona’s population grows and the cost of land increases, places like Catalina become even more important to a state shaped by its wide, open spaces.

The same is true of other state parks that celebrate the state’s natural beauty, as well as those that recall the past, such as the historic courthouse in Tombstone, the Spanish presidio in Tubac, the prehistoric ruins at Homolovi (closed for a year because of budget cuts) and the world-class geological formations in Kartchner Caverns. And don’t forget the bikini country of Lake Havasu or water skiing at Lyman Lake.

These are picture-postcard places where families make memories and rural communities make bank.

Nearly 2.5 million people visit the state parks each year, with half coming from out of state, says State Parks Director Bryan Martyn.

The parks are a playground for urban Arizonans, but they are an economic driver for rural areas.

Martyn says state parks bring more than $300 million to rural economies annually. That’s a powerful economic driver, but years of funding cuts have left those who run the parks unable to keep up with necessary repairs, let alone acquire new parks for future generations.

“Simply put, without a stable, sustainable funding, Arizona’s park system will not be able to survive,” according to a 2009 report from Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute.

When it comes to the consequences of not putting resources into our parks, Travous puts it even more bluntly:

“It will get to the point where they are so hammered you don’t want to go there.”

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WHAT YOU CAN DO

Arizona State Parks are a resource for today and a promise for tomorrow. But short-sighted funding decisions imperil their future. You can help change that.

  • VISIT. Arizona’s state parks offer dazzling natural wonders, family recreational activities and authentic windows into Arizona’s history and prehistory. azstateparks.com
  • BE A CHAMPION. There’s an election coming up. Ask candidates for state office how they plan to support Arizona’s parks and let them know you want this to be a priority issue.
  • GET INVOLVED. More than a dozen parks have volunteer “friends” groups that provide fund-raising and other services for their chosen park. For information on joining or starting one: azstateparks.com/volunteer/v_foundation.html

Arizona State Parks Foundation is a non-profit that engages in advocacy, fund-raising and other support:arizonastateparksfoundation.org

The Arizona Heritage Alliance is a non-profit that promotes and protects the Heritage Fund and its goals: azheritage.org

———-

ABOUT THIS SERIES

Arizona State Parks are a valuable resource in great peril. Stripped of funding during the recession, they struggle without state money and stagger under deferred maintenance. Yet they offer open spaces and outdoor recreation for a growing urban population and an economic engine for rural communities. Popular with the public, but lacking political support, funding solutions can help the parks deliver on their remarkable potential.

Arizona State Parks discussed at Lake Havasu ‘Chat with City Hall’

[Source: havasunews.com]

[…]

[City Manager Charlie] Cassens said earlier in the meeting that he feels strongly that the Arizona State Park Board will not close down Lake Havasu State Park.

“I feel very safe saying that if all of the parks closed in the state, Windsor Beach would be the last one to go,” he said. “These are my words, but I understand that (the State Parks Board) has vowed to spend whatever is necessary and do whatever is necessary to keep it open.”

City officials previously attempted a temporary lease agreement with Arizona State Parks to keep Lake Havasu State Park open. The Parks Board denied the agreement but stated earlier this year they planned to sustain the park.

[…]

Black Bear spotted at Lake Havasu State Park

[Source: havasunews.com]

Photo submitted to havasunews.com

Authorities said they believe Lake Havasu State Park’s black bear may have moved on in the cover of darkness Sunday night.

“We didn’t trap the bear,” said Dee Pfleger, Arizona Game and Fish wildlife manager. “It could have slipped out under the cover of darkness. We will keep looking for signs of the bear at the park.”

Lake Havasu State Park officials said Monday that fresh tracks and bear droppings were found north of the park and that suggested the bear may have left Havasu. Pfleger confirmed the findings were on the access road heading down to the PWC ramp.

The state park, which was closed to visitors early Monday, has since reopened.

Shane Ray, 43, said he spotted the bear swimming offshore about 500 yards from the north ramp. He switched off his trolling motor and started making phone calls to friends, Arizona State Parks officials, Arizona Game and Fish Department to report the sighting.

“I saw this big black object in the water,” he said. “It was swimming toward the California side. It kept swimming out there for about 20 minutes. It never growled at me or never lunged toward my boat. It seemed scared and it looked tired.

“It was breathing very, very hard and I was afraid he was going to drown, and I didn’t want to see that happen. So I forced him up on the shore,” Ray continued.

Ray said he was within six feet of the swimming black bear.

Ray said officials from the agencies told him the animal was likely a wild pig or badger. Ray insisted it was a black bear, telling them he had photographs. Authorities then asked Ray how much he had had to drink that day, he said.

“I wanted everybody to see it. I couldn’t believe it myself,” Ray said. “It really surprised me. I was astonished.”

Ray, who is on the water fishing four or five days a week, said the bear is an unusual type of wildlife he has scene on the water.

“I really want to see (the bear) captured and relocated,” Ray said. “This is personal to me now.”

Pfleger said while hiking or walking make as much noise as possible to let any wild animals know you are nearby, don’t approach the animal and make yourself as big as possible.

“We are not actively looking for the bear, but are encouraging if someone sees the bear they need to call the Arizona Game and Fish hotline at 800-352-0700 to reach the dispatch center in Phoenix,” Plefer said.

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