The governor today reached an agreement that will forestall the shuttering of over 100 State Parks here in California. Unfortunately, the agreement will lead to shortened hours at many parks and what was called "substantial service reductions."

The legislature is working towards putting a proposition on the ballot in 2010 to raise the vehicle licensing fee by $15, with all funding earmarked for the State Park system. I, for one, wouldn't mind paying a little extra to help save our parks. Read the story here

I for one would like to pay LESS and just have less services.

Why does the park need to close down because of budget crunch?! I really could care less if the gift shop is open, and I can pick up trash along the trail.

This kills me when I see a park closed. Does someone need to be there for me to walk through the forest? Did you make the forest? Do you have the right to stop me from enjoying it? There are plenty of parks that survive just fine with a dirt trailhead parking lot, and a self registration booth.

Who has the right to say when people can and can not enjoy God's creation?

I think your attitude is somewhat short sighted. If only a select few are using those parks, do you really think anyone will care when in the next budget crunch the state starts selling timber leases on it? or removes the people maintaining the trails because they are only serving an "elite few".

Instead of being an elitist and talking about wilderness as god intended it, start thinking about who keeps the people who are bought and paid for by the business interest^H^H^H^H^H^Helected state officials in check when they want to simply change the park into timber or hydropower because nobody uses it. You may not like overweight tourons or groomed trails, but did your kids *start* hiking 50 miles from nowhere? do you think that overweight touron is going to care if they kill the park utterly if they never go there?

They have paved trails and touron traps in my national parks up here too - I don't like the touron trail? great, walk off of it and go somewhere else. But I'm darn glad the park has it and is accessible to more then just the hardcore, or it wouldn't exist for long. the mining and timber leases would be in there to line the pockets of the industrialists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^create jobs...

I also like the gift shop to make money for the park so I pay less, which it should unless you do something silly like privatize it to reduce the number of state employees and put a one time cash drop into the trough for the pigs which looks good for one election cycle.

I guess I've been in Canada too long. I actually like having roads and schools and health care and the like. Makes paying taxes not so bad.

But seriously, You wanna be elitist about public resources, you're going to lose them. big time. Yeah, I'm elitist when I'm out, and I use my feet to be so. Beyond that I support getting the most fat overweight donut chowing RV driving bozo into the parks by any means possible - so that they might colletively care enough that my grandchildren have wilderness to be elite in.

BEWARE OF THE EARMARK!
The money seldom goes where it was intended. I love Cali and think its a amazing place, I guess making pot legal wasn't quite the tax boost they thought it would be.

Pot's legal here? I must have missed the memo.

I must be mistaken, I thought if you had a headache you could be prescribed medical maryjane and there was tax revenue from that, I guess the article that I read that claimed there was over two hundred "drug stores" with doctors on site that issue a prescription card must have been wrong.

You're not totally off base, as there are medical marijuana dispensaries that have operated on and off (between intermittent federal raids). But the whole revenue generation idea IIUC revolves around making it available to all adults but regulated and taxed. Voila, budget solved! (right) Needless to say, the plan has some bugs and will never happen.

Ironically, one of the big problems in the state is national and state forest pot farming by Mexican cartels. With the budget cuts there are fewer rangers to find them. They do a lot of damage and have even started some forest fires, not to mention they're armed to the teeth.

Other countries must be better, but US, state and local government rarely spends tax money without special interest in mind.
Maybe UC Berkely would be willing to share the government grant they just received to catalog and post on a website the various collectibles the grateful dead own. $650,000, no not a joke. Would probably pay maybe 9 or 10 park rangers.

We in California have seen the threat of park closures before. It's always just political sabre rattling and nothing ever happens. The park system is easy to use as a political pawn.

I won't believe it the next time it happens either.

It is my hope that the now excessive fees will be reduced when the economy gets better. That has actually happened in the past.

I just don't see why they can't declare an area a national or state park, and leave it alone. Or at the most put in some access roads and parking lots.
Make it an untouchable area, as in, it can't be sold or bartered to mining, logging companies, politicians, etc. If there isn't a lot of cost to keeping a park open (paying a bunch of employees to run gift shops, and to pay for all the paving and railings, and keeping up the trails, etc.) then there would be less chance of politicians threatening to close them, because it wouldn't save them that much money...

At what point does the wilderness cease to be wilderness and just become a parking lot with trees in it? Will you still be glad you were able to "save" the park then?

P.S. I'm not elitist, I've just seen too many areas ruined by making them easily accessible to the public.
Heck, I'm overweight and out of shape, and I work 5 days a week, so most of my hikes are 6 to 10 miles a day for only two days and one night. That doesn't mean I want a road every 10 miles in Yosemite, so I can see every part of the park.
I know that if I want to see certain areas, I need to get in better shape to cover more miles, or take some time off work to spend more time out.
Why should I desire to ruin the park for those that can go 20 miles a day for a week at a time, just because I can't?

Oh, and it's not only the "select few" it's anyone who wants to. They just have to be willing to walk more than 20 steps from there vehicle.
I don't even mind a crowded trail. Even if I pass a lot of people on a trail, at least the majority of them are polite and like minded individuals seeking the same thing I am, and we only see each other in passing. I'd much rather pass a lot of people on the trails, than come to the mile surrounding the park headquarters and have to wade through the throngs of people milling about.
I would still encourage everyone to get out and hit the trail, even if it is only a 1 mile hike, but lets leave the railings, paved trails, and gift shops out of it.
Heck, you could still even have a gift shop, just have it a few miles away, and let the shop's proceeds pay for the shop. Then, people who want to see the gift shop and learn some history can do that without congesting the trail heads.

I just don't see why they can't declare an area a national or state park, and leave it alone.

Oh, they can, they can. But whatever is proclaimed inviolate and protected "forever" by one generation can just as easily be undone by the next generation who come along, and what is to stop them? Nothing, unless they stop themselves.

The only way to ensure real protection is to ensure that people choose protection over despoilation and short term gain. To have them choose, they have to feel there is a value in that choice. If they have no conception of that value, then that "protected" land is fair game and will be sacrificed - because the ignorant will not see it as a sacrifice of anything they want to want or value.

Wilderness areas are somewhat like what Stingray wants, but they are under pressure from developers and oil and gas interests, like ANWAR and parts of Utah.

I'm with Phat on this, the tourists who flock to Yosemite Valley in Summer and never get more than a few yards from their cars help pay to keep the roads open in winter so I can go camping and never see them. I do see the day snowshoers, but so what? They are on foot just like me and are gone by mid afternoon. Then I am pretty much on my own.

I don't like the video stores and all that either, but the concessionaires' royalties help keep the parks open and I consider them a necessary evil.

Without a constituency like the average tourist who thinks driving a huge motorhome is camping, the parks would have been sold off long ago and turned into just another Disney World with better scenery.

There are different levels of parks with different purposes.

Neighborhood parks are generally small and maintained by the City. The amenities are playground equipment and picnic facilities.

Regional Parks are bigger and include athletic fields.

Open space is generally designed for passive uses - yes an oxymoron definition. The amenities are trails, lakes and/or streams.

Governments have limited resources and should use those resources to create value. Parks, Police and Public Works all create value and should receive funding priority.

State Parks generally protect an area with historic or natural value. Camping is normally in designated sites and may include RV hookups.

National Parks are a lot like State Parks except bigger and better.

Wilderness Areas are defined in the Wilderness Act of 1964. These are the places where nature is to be preserved.

The west has a lot of public land that is basically left-overs. All the land could have been claimed under the Homestead Act or Mining Act if it had commercial value. What is left-over is places that are too high, steep or dry to make a living with just 160 acres.

I also prefer to use the less developed and intensley managed places, but there is a purpose for all of them.

Parks actually add value to the surrounding real estate. I will avoid the chicken and egg debate, but parks reflect the prosperity of the community. Developed Parks generate commercial activity, but Wilderness Areas have much less commercial potential. Commercial activity is needed to support the park systems. It is all about balance.

I hope for you guys in Cali that trailruner is right.
In MD we don't have any wilderness areas, thats why I go to WV,and VA, we have state parks and forest and all the rest mostly paid for by entrance fees and revenue from hunting and fishing license, city parks are paid for by tricking people into parking in no parking zones and giving them tickets plus athletic league fees. Most of the actual hiking trails in tristate area are maintained by PATC volunteers.

I don't know about other states, but we have some unique state parks in California that more closely resemble wilderness. I did a seven-day hike three years ago in Henry Coe State Park, near San Jose, and after the first night we only saw one other person. I can go backpacking into the far reaches of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park and never see anybody.

If parks such as these were closed, could I still use them? Maybe, or maybe not. If the visitor center and parking lot at Henry Coe were closed, I doubt I could hike there, because my vehicle would likely get ticketed or even towed. If they closed the gate at Picacho State Park on the Colorado, access would be impossible, because the park is about twenty miles from the main road, and I wouldn't be able to get my boat to the water.

What is often overlooked is the economic benefits of having national, state, county and local parks. The communities of Yuma and Winterhaven, for example, benefit greatly from Picacho. Morgan Hill derives a lot of economic boost from having Henry Coe near it. The economy of Fresno is largely dependent upon Yosemite and Sequoia/King's Canyon. I used to live in Manteca, and we always saw a jump in our economy during spring and summer when the RV's started flooding into Yosemite. Those people spend money in the local economy. Politicians who wish to balance the budget by cutting parks are being penny wise and pound foolish.

There probably is some fat in the Parks budget that could be trimmed and maybe some services should be outsourced, but closing Parks is counterproductive.

Long term a community, state or nation can not be better than is educational system - we should not cut there.

Defined benefit pension plans are slowly disappearing from the private sector and should start disappearing from the public sector. State and local governments got used to market gains helping with the funding of pensions, but now they are having to increase funding to compensate for stock market losses. You must honor the promises made long ago, but the pensions paid to retired state and local employees does NOT create value. It is difficult to balance a budget when you are paying deferred compensation for services that you received many years ago.

We also need to consider that some of the social safety net programs do not create value.

A lot of public universities already have a defined contribution system for faculty pensions; TIAA/CREF. This, to me, is one of the best managed DC pension plans in the US. The stock portion of my retirement only declined by a few hundred a month in this last market tanking while others I know who are on company-arranged DC plans lost 30-40%. The "sort of fixed" portion of my retirement (TIAA) stayed the same. We had to take in our belts one notch compared with 3-4 notches for some of our acquaintances.

Actually, I think that the new federal retirement program is based on a defined contribution; at least it sounds that way to me. That is, unless you are a congress-person. Then you are on a retirement gravy train that you get to vote on yourself.

Pika,

United Airlines declared bankruptcy to unload their defined benefit plan.

Colorado PERA is only 52% funded. Difficult to manage a budget when you have a huge liability for services received many years ago.

The conversion to DC plans is underway, but there is still some more pain to come for both the private and public sector.