The Politics of Lake Brownwood State Park and her conditions !
Parks officials say money not keeping up with needs
Needs in equipment, repairs, personnel.
By Jason Embry
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Texas parks officials said Friday that they need about 38 percent more money per year to pay for day-to-day operations at state parks.
In addition, figures presented to the department's State Park Advisory Committee called for millions more for equipment, major repairs and road repairs.
"In order to pay for the base bills, we have had to stop buying equipment; basically, we have had to stop doing minor repairs," said Scott Boruff, deputy executive director of operations at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
Parks officials have warned in recent months that they have no money to acquire new parks or repair and improve the roughly 120 parks and historic sites already in the system. They're looking for ways to persuade the Legislature to increase their funding during the 2007 session.
Officials say they have about $49.5 million to operate the parks this year, compared with $50.1 million in 2002.
During that time, they say, annually recurring operating costs have increased $6 million, and they estimate that they could use about $18.8 million more for daily operating expenses such as small repairs, hiring of new employees and new materials.
Texas state parks are funded primarily by a statewide sales tax on sporting goods, which generates about $105 million a year. The share for parks, however, has been capped by the Texas Legislature at less than one-third of that so the rest can be used for general state spending.
A subcommittee of the Park Advisory panel spelled out some of the parks' needs Friday. Beyond the additional money for daily operations, the subcommittee called for $25 million in major repairs, $15 million in road repairs and $6.6 million for equipment.
As of 2003, the most recent year available, Texas ranked 49th among states in per capita spending on state parks and recreation, said John Crompton of the Recreation, Park and Tourism Sciences Department at Texas A&M University.
Voters approved $101.5 million in bonds for Parks and Wildlife programs in 2001, and about $46 million of that has not yet been issued.
Over the next couple months, parks officials and the advisory committee will work on strategies, including making their case to lawmakers as they head into the 2007 legislative session.
Advisory Committee Chairman John Montford, a former chairman of the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee, said he understands as well as anybody that lawmakers must pay for many services, such as education and health care.
"I hope we can be part of some creative ideas to help the (Parks and Wildlife) Commission and the Legislature solve some of these problems," Montford said.
jembry@statesman.com; 445-3654
source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/05/20parks.html
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Note from Steve Harris, I recently spoke with Republican State Representative Jim Keffer (Brownwood Rep.) on the airwaves of KXYL 96.9 FM (Brownwood Talk Radio) regarding this issue. Keffer was a call-in guest on the topic of school financing and mentioned the 8.2 billion budget surplus. I requested that Keffer and his peers in the Capitol (including Brownwood's Republican Senator Troy Frasier) consider replacing the monies that were stripped away from the state parks since a portion of that surplus was made from the deep cuts to our State Park System. I also asked Mr Keffer how many State Parks he had in his district. He said 2 that he could think of but that he knew he had more than that. Here is a list of the State Parks in Mr Keffers district:
Acton SHS
Fort Griffin SP & SHS
Lake Brownwood SP
Lake Mineral Wells Trailway (part)
Possum Kingdom SP
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Side note from Steve: I wonder how many of our elected officials visit our State Park System (as consumers) or support the system by purchasing this
?
source: http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:XzegEazwDncJ:houston.sierraclub.org/news/2006/0404a.pdf+jim+keffer+state+parks&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=safari
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