Cash-Strapped Parks Raise User Rates

It will soon cost a buck to drive through a county park where it was free before.

And count on another $3 to rent that pretty beach-front campsite.

So it goes with the county’s cash-poor parks agency, a system barred from dipping into the county’s general fund, which has found itself in a search for new revenue.

The latest source--your wallet.

Although some county supervisors fear higher fees will keep people from visiting the county’s parks, a board majority approved the first fee increases in eight years on Tuesday.

Officials project the new fees will more than double annual park revenue, from $63,500 to $141,000.

Scott Weiss, a member of the citizens group Preserve Our Parks, was the only person to criticize the new fees and the Board of Supervisors’ policy that county parks should be completely self-sufficient.

“You have an issue of stewardship here,” Weiss told the supervisors. “You can’t look at this just as a business enterprise.”

But county supervisors say in an era of dwindling financial support from state lawmakers, Ventura County has been forced to look at its public parks not just as pretty places, but as potential moneymakers.

County parks receive no support from the county’s general fund operating budget. In recent years, the policy has put parks officials in a scramble to find opportunities to lease-out county parks to private operators.

Most recently, county supervisors approved plans to transform a Camarillo area park into an outdoor amphitheater and golf course.

Last month, the board voted to cut a million-dollar annual subsidy from the financially struggling Channel Islands Harbor that for two decades was used to support the county park system.

It was that move, parks officials say, that prompted the agency to look toward fee increases.

Supervisor Judy Mikels voted against the fee hikes, concerned that parks officials did not do enough to cut department spending before advocating fee increases.

The new fees mean weekend and holiday use fees at county parks will increase from $2 to $3. Nightly camping fees at Faria and Hobson beaches will increase from $17 to $20. Overnight fees at Rincon Parkway will rise from $13 to $16 a night and at Foster Park from $11 to $14.

Not all park use fees went up, however.

Due to lagging rentals, a cabin at Steckel Park near Santa Paula will now rent for $125 nightly, instead of $150.