Paicines
– Visiting Pinnacles National Monument will cost up to twice as
much in 2008 if proposed fee hikes are adopted.
Paicines – Visiting Pinnacles National Monument will cost up to twice as much in 2008 if proposed fee hikes are adopted.
The proposed entry fee increases would raise vehicle entrance charges from $5 to $10 and non-vehicle fees from $3 to $5 beginning Jan. 1, 2008. The price of a Pinnacles annual pass would go from $15 to $20.
Eighty percent of the entrance fees are returned to the monument, an amount that would double under the increases, said Carl Brenner, supervisor of interpretation and education for the park.
“We’re moving forward with this unless we have an outcrying against it,” Brenner said. “We’re assuming the public is for it.”
Brenner said the National Park Services made the decision to create consistency in its parks’ fee structures. Members of the public can write to Pinnacles National Monument and express their opinions, Brenner said. Brenner and park Superintendent Eric Brunnemann will then pass the information to the regional office.
Park officials project reeling in $57,600 through entrance fees in 2007. The increase would bring in $114,000 in 2008, money needed for the improvement of the park’s facilities and trails.
Of the $65,000 the monument kept from user fees in 2006, only $2,600 came from annual pass purchases. The rest comes from day use fees.
Much of the fees returned to the park will go to maintenance projects that have been delayed.
Those projects include making portions of the park and its facilities more wheelchair accessible, such as the Bear Gulch Visitor Center and Bench Trail.
The Bear Gulch Visitor Center roof, which dates to the 1930s, will also be repaired.
Entrance fees will be used for upgrading the newly acquired Pinnacles Camp with new picnic tables and fire rings.
The park’s alternative transportation system, which officials are working to develop more extensively, will receive $2 of every vehicle fee. Brenner hopes to eventually have clean fuel transportation that reaches into neighboring cities such as Hollister and Soledad to bring visitors into the park.
Retired Hollister resident Bill Weinheimer visits the monument with his wife, Polly, up to 45 times a year. Weinheimer is wary of fee increases.
“One of the things I really object to is the doubling of prices,” he said. “These things are really inflationary.”
However, Weinheimer believes the park would benefit from funding for improvements.
“Fee raises always have two sides that are valid,” he said.
The fee increase for the annual pass, which Weinheimer and his wife have purchased for years, is a deal, he said.
“That’s absolutely a reasonable amount,” he said. “I think that’s on the low side.”
Hollister resident David Huboi, who hikes and camps at the park with his family, said he fully supports a fee increase.
“It’s a small price to pay as far as I see it, as long as we can keep those trails clean and accessible to people with disabilities,” he said.
Many of the park’s users come from outside of San Benito County.
Ron Williams, director of a San Jose-based hiking group called Get Outta the House, said his small group hikes throughout the Bay Area and visits Pinnacles four or five times a year.
“Pinnacles is about as far away as we get,” Williams said. “But it’s such a beautiful place.”
Williams is a strong believer in fees for those who actually use the parks.
“The people that do use things need to be aware that it costs to have rangers and trail maintenance,” Williams said.
Michael Van Cassell covers public safety for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 335 or mv*********@fr***********.com.
