Hollister
– A small portion of $250 million recently set aside for
maintaining California’s state parks might trickle down to San
Benito County.
Hollister – A small portion of $250 million recently set aside for maintaining California’s state parks might trickle down to San Benito County.
Local park officials are hoping that their request for $42,000 to overhaul Fremont Peak State Park’s water well will make it high enough on the state’s list of “pressing issues” to merit a go-ahead. The well broke down a few years ago and a local firm did some minimal work to keep it alive.
It’s been running, but just barely, said C.L. Price, the sector superintendent for California State Parks, Monterey District. The well also needs to be brought up to current water standards, he said.
“Knock on wood, it’s working right now,” he said. “But there’s no guarantee.”
The state has a list of 10,000 maintenance projects totaling more than $900 million. They range in price from a several thousand to a few million dollars, said state parks spokesman Roy Stearns.
California has about 270 state parks. All of them have maintenance requests. With the recent $250 million allocation barely meeting a third of that list’s dollar amount, park officials will be using a “crisis” factor in coming months to measure the necessity of each requested project, he said. Projects to improve health, safety and water at parks will get priority.
“We aren’t interested in distributing this equally,” Stearns said. “We’re interested in sending the money where the most serious problems are. Some of the problems go back 50 years.”
California created its state parks department in 1864. The parks system runs on $340 million annual budget and sees nearly 80 million visitors every year. Camping fees and licenses pay for about a third of that. The rest comes from taxes.
“There’s a reason we don’t want to raise (user fees),” Stearns said. “We don’t want to price people out of their own parks.”
A joint 1995 study by state parks and the University California at Berkeley found that parks channel nearly $2.6 billion to neighboring local economies, Stearns said.
Fremont peak has 25 camp sites and one group site, but most of the visitors make the trek for the dark skies, which provide an excellent view of the stars through the observatory there. The association that runs the observatory will celebrate its 20th anniversary next month.
San Benito County has two additional state parks: Hollister Hills State Vehicular Recreation Area and San Juan Bautista State Historic Park. The Castro-Breene Adobe buildings there recently got an earthquake retrofit and the park isn’t slated for funding at this time. Hollister Hills operates out of a special trust fund supported by gasoline taxes.
Banks Albach covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 335.
