Park Funding Measure Has a Local Focus

In Florida, they’re spending $300 million a year on parks and open space, a buying binge without precedent in the nation. New Jersey is not far behind, bankrolling a decade-long shopping spree to save a million acres.

But in California--once the unrivaled national leader in preserving natural spaces--parks have gone begging. And it shows.

“Our parks have been ignored for 16 years,” said Rusty Areias, director of the increasingly dilapidated state park system. “We have fallen way, way behind.”

On March 7, voters will be asked to help reverse that slide with Proposition 12, an ambitious $2.1-billion bond measure that would funnel cash to a vast array of park, recreation and conservation projects around the state. If approved, it would be the largest park bond in California history--and the first passed here in a dozen years.

Although previous park bonds emphasized habitat for wildlife and the needs of far-flung state parks, Proposition 12 includes a substantial chunk of money--about $827 million--for projects in people’s neighborhoods. Among them are soccer fields, playgrounds, bike paths, swimming pools and improvements to museums, zoos and aquariums. For the Los Angeles region, the benefits would be substantial. The city stands to receive $43 million, based on its population, and the county would reap about $60 million. Add to that specifically targeted allocations--$15 million for the San Gabriel and Los Angeles rivers, $35 million for the Santa Monica Mountains, $3 million for the California African-American Museum--and the region’s total bounty soars to nearly $224 million.

The bond’s emphasis on local projects is by no means accidental. In part, it reflects the politics of the legislators who wrote the measure--including Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who insisted that a hefty share of the funds go to urban areas, which he felt were given short shrift in past bonds.

The local focus also signals a growing recognition that for most Californians, the typical park experience is a Sunday barbecue at the corner playground, not a backpacking trip in the wilderness.

“For many people, income limitations or other pressures make it impossible to get away for a weeklong vacation,” said Ellen Oppenheim, manager of recreation and parks for the city of Los Angeles. “So local parks represent islands of sanity and a sense of calm in a world where there aren’t many opportunities to get that.”

Oppenheim and others say that for California, in particular, investing in parks and open space is a most urgent matter. The state is expected to grow by 18 million people during the next two decades, and places to hike, bird-watch, picnic, meditate or merely enjoy the shade of a tree will become ever more crowded.

The longer the state waits to set aside parkland and open space, the tougher the job gets: Real estate values escalate, and in many densely populated areas, available parcels simply don’t exist.

“We’re facing tremendous growth in California,” Villaraigosa said. “Without green spaces and soccer fields and places for kids to play, what kind of quality of life will we have?”

Recent polls show that voters favor Proposition 12 by a sizable margin, and the measure has won the endorsement of scores of diverse groups, from the Congress of California Seniors to the California Chamber of Commerce. Even the building industry--not often associated with efforts to preserve open space--is on the bandwagon, with one company, Pardee Construction, donating $25,000 to the cause.

Despite such support, the park measure is one of five bond issues on the March ballot, raising concerns that voters may balk at approving so much debt. In all, the bonds total $4.7 billion.

“There’s a tendency of voters to focus more on their fears than their hopes, and that presents a challenge for measures like ours,” said Steven Glazer, manager of the park bond campaign.

Park boosters hope the surging economy will allay those fears. Bond financing is government’s time-tested way of paying for expensive projects, from prisons to schools and highways, and the state legislative analyst says approval of the five new bonds would have little effect on California’s overall debt burden.

Opponents say borrowing billions during flush economic times is shortsighted: “The economy is booming, and thank God for that,” said state Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside). “But five years from now, we’ll still be obligated for these bonds and the economy may not be booming then.”

Haynes, who is running for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, argues that “if all these park projects are so great and noble and important, then we should pay for them now with our huge budget surplus.”

That’s not to say he supports the content of the bond. The bulk of it, Haynes says, would pay for “a lot of open space, which is just a bunch of weeds isolated from any use or human habitation. We’re not talking about places where you can take your kids and they can go on swings and play baseball.”

In fact, close to 40% of the bond money--the largest single slice of the pie--would go to local agencies for parks, ball fields, trails and recreation facilities, many of them for disadvantaged youths. Under the funding formula spelled out in the bond act, each of the state’s cities and counties would receive money based on population, plus extra funds for special projects.

Villaraigosa, a Democrat running for mayor of Los Angeles, says an infusion of cash for urban parks is long overdue. Per capita park acreage in Los Angeles, he says, is among the lowest of any big American city, standing at 0.91 acres per 1,000 people.

“This bond puts almost half the money in the urban areas,” Villaraigosa said, “and it really only begins to address the need.”

The last park measure passed in California was a $776-million bond in 1988. A $2-billion proposal was on the ballot in June 1994, but it failed along with three other bond measures that year.

With no new bond money and a series of state budget cuts, the state’s 265 state parks, monuments, beaches and historic sites took a beating through the 1990s. Much like libraries, parks have been seen as a luxury by politicians facing tough fiscal choices, an easy place to trim in lean times.

The result is a backlog of maintenance and rehabilitation projects that will cost more than $1 billion. On top of such mundane problems as broken picnic tables, outdated interpretive displays and eroding trails, state parks face huge bills for restoration work needed on dozens of deteriorating historic structures.

Burdened by such woes, the state park system has had little capital to expand its holdings. It’s been eight years since California opened a campground, and spending to acquire new parkland has tumbled dramatically.

Proposition 12 would provide $545 million for the state parks department, some of which would be used for critical land acquisitions. The balance would be divided among such park projects as a tram to carry visitors one mile into the depths of Empire Mine in the Sierra foothills, and a visitor center at Chino Hills State Park.

The bond also dedicates millions for open space, environmental restoration and wildlife habitat. Among the investments: $50 million to help restore the clarity of Lake Tahoe and $5 million to help clean up the Salton Sea.

“California has lost significant ground in preserving its magnificent open spaces over the last decade, especially compared to other states,” said Corey Brown, director of governmental affairs for the nonprofit Trust for Public Land. “With our economy strong now, this is the time to be making investments.”

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Park Projects of Prop. 12

Here, by county, is a list of projects earmarked for spending under Proposition 12:

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Source: https://www.safeparks.org