Trail Users Must Buy $23 Permit : Recreation: Hikers, bikers, joggers and equestrians must pay the fee. Officials say funds are needed to maintain 330 miles of dirt trails.

With grudging acceptance, hikers, bikers, joggers and horseback riders are facing a new recreation fee for the new year: a $23 annual permit for using the county’s 330 miles of dirt trails, many of them crisscrossing the San Gabriel Valley.

In a sign of leaner and meaner budgetary times, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors decided last September to start the permit system on Jan. 1.

Saying the county could no longer afford to maintain its trails, officials proposed the fee to forestall closing the network, which emanates from a series of nature centers and parks such as the ones at Eaton Canyon in Pasadena, Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas and Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights.

Now that the permit is required, many outdoor enthusiasts seem resigned to the fee.

“Some people don’t mind paying for having the privilege of riding on the trails. Others think that they’re already paying their taxes for this sort of thing,” said John Gordon, owner of San Dimas Grain Co., frequented by many equestrians in the northeastern San Gabriel Valley.

Many of his customers, he said, are happy about the prospect that more attention may be paid to the trails.

But Glen Owens, head of the Big Santa Anita Historical Society, which promotes use of the San Gabriel Mountains, said county officials “might as well say, ‘Hey, just make a donation.’ ”

And Glendora resident Beth Glover, vice president of a local chapter of a statewide group called Equestrian Trails, said the $23 fee is “an awful lot if you go on the county trails only once a year or so.”

The regulations do not allow for buying a one-day pass. Passes can be purchased at county regional parks and nature centers, at some city halls and from many businesses catering to hikers, cyclists and equestrians. The fine for not having one is $54.

Elizabeth Pomeroy, a spokeswoman for the Pasadena group of the Angeles Chapter of the Sierra Club, said the permit system “seems quite ill-planned. The Sierra Club feels we need more access to trails and natural areas, not less.”

However, she said, “In principle, it seems to be a good thing to have people who use resources pay for them.”

As the new system is starting, there remains some “confusion, lots of questions and a certain amount of anger, which we completely understand,” said Mickey Long, who oversees the county’s Eaton Canyon Park, where 1.5 miles of trails fall under the ordinance.

Some of the confusion is over where the passes will be required. Passes are not needed in the Angeles National Forest. However, county trails that lead into the forest do require passes. And dirt bike trails require permits but paved trails do not.

The financial difficulty faced by the county, Pomeroy said, points to the need for environmental and outdoor groups to entice more volunteers to help with trail maintenance as a way to reduce the reliance on the fee system.

The trails are maintained by Los Angeles County’s Department of Parks and Recreation. In the San Gabriel Valley they stretch from the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the south to the Puente Hills.

Pure and simple, county officials said, it was a choice between closing the county trails or instituting the fee system.

“You don’t like it, I don’t like it but we have to do it,” Supervisor Ed Edelman told a group of outdoor enthusiasts who opposed the fee at a board meeting in September.

During the debates, Supervisor Deane Dana unsuccessfully argued that it would cost as much to enforce the permit regulations as would be generated from the $23 annual fees, which are expected to raise $150,000 for trail maintenance.

Critics of the system question how the permit rules will be enforced.

For the first month, there will be a grace period and county officials acknowledge that they have precious few mounted safety officers to patrol the trails.

“It is not going to be a huge enforcement effort because we just don’t have the manpower,” Parks and Recreation Department spokeswoman Sheila Ortega said.

But she said that if trail users fail to buy the permits, less money can be set aside for maintenance. The fee system, she said, “is the only hope for the trail system.”

Bonelli Regional Park assistant superintendent Marlene Davis said, “We’re all paying for some things that were free before.”

She said she expected to get a lot more negative reaction to the permit. “Most of the people have been very positive.” One man, she said, even bought a permit--complete with a neon green wrist band holder that says “I support trails”--as a Christmas present for a friend.