Struggling to preserve its parks amid deep budget cuts, Sacramento County will consider a proposal asking voters to boost sales taxes for a new regional park district that would take control of county parkland.
The annual budget for parks has been slashed in half, to $2.9 million, compared with a decade ago, and more cuts are planned in the new fiscal year. In response, the county already has leased one park property to a nonprofit and another to a for-profit venture.
Along the American River Parkway, the jewel of the regional park system, services from basic trash pickup to law enforcement patrols are under strain.
A committee organized by Save the American River Association aims to stabilize the parks with a 2012 ballot measure raising sales taxes by one-tenth of 1 percent, or 10 cents on a $100 purchase.
The money would bring in $8.5 million annually to fund a new regional park district. A seven-member elected board would oversee the district, which would take over the 32 parks now managed by Sacramento County.
The proposal followed a year of study and is modeled after the East Bay Regional Park District, a highly regarded Bay Area agency that manages 56 parks in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.
Bill Davis, who chaired the committee, said the proposal initially arose out of concern for the American River Parkway. But he said the group soon decided a broader approach was needed.
To take pressure off the parkway, which receives about 8 million visitors annually, the group concluded the county needs to open up more parkland throughout the region. Out of 15,000 acres of county-owned parkland, about 6,000 acres are undeveloped and essentially not available to the public.
"We recognized that unless the rest of (the) system thrives, we're going to be hard-pressed to p rotect the parkway from overuse," said Davis, a board member of Save the American River Association.
The committee's members include representatives from Sacramento Area Bicycle Advocates, the Nature Conservancy, the Environmental Council of Sacramento, neighborhood associations and other park groups.
They hired a polling firm, which surveyed 600 county residents in February. Results showed 73 percent support for a one-eighth percent sales tax increase, which is slightly larger than the one-tenth proposal the committee settled on.
County officials are considering the idea.
The committee worked closely with the county executive's office to develop the proposal, as well as parks staff, the county counsel's office and finance department.
Yet recently, Davis and other committee members say county officials have become more reserved about the proposal for reasons that are unclear.
Finalized on April 13, the plan will be presented to the Board of Supervisors on May 24. The committee was initially told it would likely be referred to county staff for more detailed analysis thereafter.
Now the county intends to schedule a second meeting in June to consider other park management concepts, said interim County Executive Steve Szalay.
Rob Leonard, administrator of the Municipal Services Agency, which oversees county parks, said no specific plans for that meeting have been developed yet.
"We're going to encourage everybody that has an idea or an approach to come forward and let's see what's there, what are the options, then analyze those," Szalay said.
He called the regional park district and sales tax proposal "very interesting. It's something the board (of supervisors) should be very interested in."
Warren Truitt, president of Save the American River Association, worries the county is considering plans to privatize other parks, possibly including the American River Parkway. This may result in less accountability over sensitive lands acquired with public dollars, he said, and possibly fewer access opportunities for the population at large.
"My experience is when the county wants to kill something, they ask to study it some more," Davis said.
In March, the county leased Gibson Ranch Park to developer Doug Ose, a former congressman. He aims to support its operating costs through new fee-based ventures in the park.
Leonard said no new partnerships of that sort are in the works.
Ose declined to comment when asked if he had approached the county to operate other parks. He objects to a sales tax increase for parks.
"I think this is the wrong time to be proposing new taxes of any sort whatsoever," Ose said. "I don't believe there's a shortage of revenue. I believe there's a shortage of management creativity."
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