Budget cuts could close 13 parks

Leave it to a 6-year-old to provide perspective at a state budget session where parks and historic sites are under the ax.

“I’ll give them all my money,” Claire told her father Tom Mills.

Mills, a member of the board of directors of the parks’ nonprofit advocacy group called Friends of Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites who lives in Grayson, told the story Wednesday to the Board of Natural Resources with Claire in the audience. “So maybe there’s a funding source there,” he joked.

The board unanimously approved spending cuts of 6 percent to 10 percent that could close up to six state parks and seven historic sites. Other items offered up would reduce the state’s ability to clean up hazardous waste sites and enforce hunting, fishing and boating laws.

Final decisions on exactly how to cut spending await Gov. Sonny Perdue and legislative leaders. In the meantime, Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Noel Holcomb already has frozen hiring, stopped replacing old vehicles and equipment, and curtailed all noncritical travel.

Also, employees are unlikely to receive a promised 2.5 percent pay raise.

Every other state agency is facing the same squeeze. The economic downturn has forced Perdue and state leaders to find at least $1.6 billion to slice out of the state spending plan approved in April that topped $21 billion.

The state park system already is working with a handicap. Its budget has been whacked since 2002.

Vacancies are piling up, leaving one in five state-funded jobs unfilled. They include managers, maintenance workers and rangers who know the difference between a loblolly pine and a longleaf pine. The jobs carry salaries generally between $20,000 and $40,000.

DNR has put some parks on the chopping block in past budget crises, in 1990 and 2004. They were pulled back, largely due to public outcry.

A recent survey of 1,600 Georgians conducted by the University of Georgia found that 88 percent support public funding of outdoor recreation, and 74 percent of those are in favor of more public dollars.

But Holcomb said additional cuts leave him no choice but to consider closing parks and historic sites. The locations have not been determined, and it’s possible all could stay open under reduced hours. In the worst case, 42 people would be laid off to save $692,335 out of the $25.4 million state-funded parks budget.

Already, at 15 locations, staff is juggled around to plug holes, Parks Division Director Becky Kelley said. And normal operating hours have been reduced at two sites, A.H. Stephens Historic State Park near Lake Oconee and the nearby Robert Toombs House Historic Site. They’re now closed on Tuesdays.

“At some point in time you’ve got to have enough employees on a facility to ensure public safety,” and customer service, Holcomb said.

The commissioner also is considering outsourcing five state-owned golf courses, and closing a nine-hole course in Fargo near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. The state runs eight of the golf courses it owns and they are heavily subsidized, losing a total of about $1 million a year. But in recent years, the Legislature has appropriated millions of dollars on nine-hole additions at two courses and an 18-hole course at Richard B. Russell State Park near Elberton.

Board member Earl Barrs, a tree farmer and land dealer from Middle Georgia said, “I’m of the opinion the state shouldn’t own any golf courses.”

Other cuts under consideration are:

• Outsourcing lodge operations at Smithgall Woods Conservation Area near Helen and Georgia Veterans Memorial State Park and Resort near Cordele to save up to $396,408;

• Reduce cleanups at abandoned hazardous waste sites to save up to $860,000;

• Eliminate 28 of 223 wildlife rangers who enforce hunting, fishing, boating and litter laws;

• Close the cold-water trout hatchery at Lake Burton in North Georgia and stock one-third fewer trout to save up to $400,000.