Posted on 03/09/2007 10:21:10 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Even as the cost of addressing disrepair in the state parks tops $1 billion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to take back money that had been earmarked for the backlog.
The list of deferred maintenance items in the 278 state parks, including several in the Bay Area, now includes nearly 8,000 leaky roofs, broken water lines, faulty sewer systems, brush fire hazards and other problems. A full 10 percent of the backlog — $123 million worth — is at Angel Island State Park in San Francisco Bay, where buildings from a military installation dating to the Civil War and a later immigration station, are decaying.
"It's a challenge," said Angel Island park superintendent Dave Matthews. "I've been joking lately that I'd like to go through a day when nothing breaks."
Last year, lawmakers and the governor set aside $250 million to begin addressing what was at the time a $900 million backlog. Since then, the price has soared to $1.2 billion.
But Schwarzenegger, trying to balance a tight budget in the face of declining tax revenues, is asking lawmakers to return $160 million of the $250 million.
The governor is running into resistance.
"I don't think that's a good idea," said Assemblywoman Lois Wolk, D-Davis, chair of the water, parks and wildlife committee. "If you don't maintain the parks now, in the long run either you can't use the parks or it costs twice as much to replace the bathrooms, the tent cabins and the gravel roads and the paved roads."
"I hope the governor will change his mind" when budget revisions are submitted in May, Wolk added.
The list of projects is long.
Near Brentwood, the house of early Contra Costa resident John Marsh was acquired by state parks in 1978 but still is not open to the public. Its walls leak and it needs hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs just to halt further decay. Restoring it as planned will cost millions of dollars.
"All we've had enough money to do is to keep it standing," said Craig Mattson, park superintendent for the John Marsh house, Mount Diablo State Park and other parks in the region.
Other projects have fared better; Mount Diablo received more than $3 million for deferred maintenance last year.
"I have no complaints. We have come out pretty good for funding," Mattson said.
The $3 million will be used to repair the South Gate Road, revamp display cases in the Summit building and fix water lines, sewer lines, stoves and picnic tables in several campgrounds.
Still, the recent funding is just a start on the Mount Diablo State Park's backlog of more than $11 million in work.
The backlog in parks across California has been building since the 1980s, according to state parks spokesman Roy Stearns.
The parks typically do not get enough money to pay for ongoing maintenance, let alone the backlog. This year, the shortfall for ongoing maintenance needs is about $50 million.
As maintenance goes unfunded and conditions worsen, it adds to the lengthy list of more costly deferred maintenance.
"If you just clean the gutters on a historic roof once a year, you don't replace the roof as often," said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation, a parks advocacy group.
When money is available for deferred maintenance, parks officials spend it first on health and safety issues, such as sewer treatment and roads.
"We have several hundred water and wastewater treatment plants from the Oregon border to Mexico. Most are 30 to 60 years old," Stearns said.
"If you don't fix water and wastewater, you start to close down campgrounds, so they are the first priority," he said.
The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office suggested that lawmakers use funds from Proposition 84, the $5.4 billion natural resources bond measure approved in November, to address some of the deferred maintenance.
The state parks department, park advocates and lawmakers such as Wolk, however, say they are hesitant to use those funds because the bond measure gives just $400 million to state parks.
Even if all of that money were spent on deferred maintenance, it would address just a third of the problems.
And voters who approved the bond measure likely expected the funds to be used for land purchases or major projects such as construction of new visitors centers — the types of capital investments that make sense to pay off over the 30-year bond repayment period.
"It's a concern that we would be spending the future investment of California on the bailing wire and Band-Aids for fixing the maintenance problems," Stearns said.
Still, neither Stearns, Wolk nor Goldstein ruled out supporting the use of some bond funds for those types of expenses.
The headline could read: "Governor wants back funds for parks' repairs"
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