Mountain Park Has Outgrown Upkeep Budget : Recreation: Holdings in the Santa Monicas climbed more than 70% in six years while operating funds rose just 15%. Cutbacks in programs and maintenance are planned.

With its acreage growing but its operating budget trailing behind, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is struggling to serve park visitors and manage the sensitive lands entrusted to its care, according to officials and others involved in protection of the mountains.

To relieve the budget squeeze, national recreation area officials have taken steps to cut visitor access to part of the Circle X Ranch property in southeastern Ventura County, arguably the most spectacular site within the mountain park. They expect to decrease the number of ranger-guided hikes and other interpretive programs at various sites. They also say they lack the ability to close off unauthorized trails and repair erosion damage.

“We end up decreasing the amount of service we’re providing in sites we already own, just to provide absolute bare minimum services on the new sites,” said David E. Gackenbach, superintendent of the recreation area.

Staffing is stretched too thin to adequately monitor and comment on private development projects that threaten wildlife habitats and scenic views, Gackenbach said. Moreover, he said, the growing park lacks a second maintenance shop needed to cut travel hours between work sites. The shop at Diamond X Ranch in Calabasas is a cramped stable in which horses and power saws compete for space.

While park holdings increased more than 70% during the last six years, operating funds went up about 15% during the same period, failing to keep pace with rising costs for salaries and supplies.

National Park Service officials say Spartan operating budgets are the rule throughout the system. “I don’t know of any park in the system that is funded at the level that the local management thinks it should be,” said Lew Albert, deputy director of the Park Service’s western regional office in San Francisco.

“I can hear the same thing from the people at Death Valley and Grand Canyon and Yosemite and Sequoia and Point Reyes,” Albert said. “No one is buttered with money. It’s not like we’re denying money to Santa Monica so we can make Redwoods National Park flush.”

Established by Congress in 1978 and stretching from Griffith Park in Los Angeles to Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County, the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a mosaic of federal, state and county parks and beaches interspersed with private holdings. Of 155,000 acres within the recreation area boundary, more than 65,000 acres are publicly owned. Federal and state acquisition programs eventually are supposed to bring that total to 100,000 acres.

But growing parks are hit hard by flat budgets, say supporters of the Santa Monicas park.

Thanks to strong efforts by area lawmakers and conservationists, the Santa Monicas park perennially is a top recipient of federal acquisition dollars, getting about $24 million the last two years--or one-seventh of the entire acquisition budget for the 357 national parks, monuments and historic sites.

Although progress was slowed by lean allocations during the Reagan years and the high cost of land in the Santa Monicas, the National Park Service owns about 17,000 acres--nearly halfway to its goal of 35,000 acres of federal parkland.

But more land creates the need for more signs, trash cans, ranger patrols and maintenance crews.

Park officials and local and congressional supporters have stressed acquisition funds over money to manage existing parkland. Otherwise, they argue, relentless development pressures and high land prices could keep the park from being completed.

Still, the effect of austere budgets could increase this year because other organizations serving mountain visitors also face financial strains.

The recreation area’s operating budget rose this year, from nearly $2.1 million to $2.37 million, the biggest increase in years. Most of the budget pays salaries of about 60 employees, including rangers.

Significant help comes from volunteers who contribute more than 60,000 hours a year handling mail, building trails and taking photographs for slide presentations. Other organizations, such as the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, supplement and subsidize Park Service programs in the mountains.

Such groups have relieved demands on the Park Service by guiding hikes and providing environmental education.

This safety net is showing signs of unraveling. An example is the William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom, an organization that leads hikes and gives nature talks to tens of thousands of visitors each year at Franklin Canyon Ranch in the mountains above Beverly Hills. It gets half its budget from the conservancy.

The conservancy, facing budget pressures, may have to sharply reduce its support of the program at the end of next month.

Gackenbach said the Park Service would not be able to make up the deficit. “If you can’t feed your family, you’re sure not going to feed somebody else’s,” he said.

The conservancy’s shrinking grant funds are also forcing the recreation area to make cutbacks at its Circle X Ranch.

The 1,655-acre tract includes Sandstone Peak, the highest point in the Santa Monicas; a network of hiking trails, Happy Hollow Campground and a boulder-filled gulch and gurgling stream known as the Grotto.

The recreation area has been running Circle X with a $250,000 conservancy grant that is almost gone. To cut ranger costs, officials have closed off the road to Happy Hollow and the Grotto. Hikers still will be able to reach the areas, but not cars.

Park officials also are talking with a local Boy Scout council about maintaining trails and performing other caretaker tasks in return for preferential use of the ranch.

Joseph T. Edmiston, executive director of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, said the organization’s job “is not to subsidize the National Park Service, and . . . you can only improvise these subsidy methods for so long.”

He said the recreation area’s financial straits reflect the low status of urban recreation areas, which are in easy reach of millions of people but lack the wildness and pristine beauty of Yellowstone or Yosemite.

“This is not your glory park,” Edmiston said. “This is a poor stepchild of the Park Service.”

Albert, the deputy regional director for the Park Service, denied that. The Santa Monicas park “is not viewed by anyone here as a stepsister,” he said. “If I were king, we’d put a lot more money into” all the parks.