Colorado to Bailout State Parks with Corporate Money?

Appears that is the direction we are heading.

tinyurl.com/c7o6b5g

If you live in Fort Collins, Public Comments are scheduled Tuesday, July 31 @ 7-9 p.m. at the Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce located at 225 S. Meldrum St.

The new America:

"You Fail, we Bail"

If the government were a company, it'd be going out of business. Good thing they have a little bit of ad space to sell for maintenance money. What, exactly is your problem? If it helps them empty the latrines more, I'll gladly use REI toilet paper.

First, throwing corporate dollars is a bandaid, not a long term solution. A corporate bailout is not a sustainable land management policy.

Second, there are many State Parks that could be cared at the local level because they are nothing more than dirt, trails and rocks. Eldo is a perfect of example, most likely OSMP could easily absorb that land into its portfolio.

Am I being overly simplistic?

Got a problem-call the police, need a rescue-call SAR, need trail work-rally the volunteers. Passes would fund cleaning the pooper. Not much goes on the day-to-day that requires the assistance of the state.

We seem to be at a place where we have massive bureaucracies, complete with 100K salaries, are managing tasks that are very simple and we are bending over backwards to protect the ruling class from any sort of change..

Local municipalities in the front range (Colorado) already oversee vast acreage of open space. They seem to be doing a pretty good job...

July 11 has already come and gone. It would have been nice to get some advance notice. I have not heard anything about this until now.

rj-n-foco wrote:July 11 has already come and gone. It would have been nice to get some advance notice. I have not heard anything about this until now.

I'm guessing it was a typo, July 11th was not a Tuesday. It's probably tonight, Tuesday July 31st.

Here are some of the ideas that were presented to produce revenue for the parks:

"A health care or fitness business may sponsor an event in the park such as lessons in setting up tents or adventure races.

A company could sponsor a beautiful viewing vista complete with a smart phone application to tell parks users what they are about to see.

Local stores could sell the "official trail snack" of Colorado State Parks.

A recycling company may pay for an ecological message wrapped around trash bins.

A soundtrack of background music for park activities may be sold online."

reporterherald.com/news/lar…

Rather then transform our State Parks in Disneyland; maybe COParksWildlife could scale back on staples, a few line items from their 2012/2013 budget:

$ 97,000 office supplies

$ 326,958 postage

$ 184,000 printing

$ 9,339 Employee moving expense

$ 140,296 Advertising

$ 12,000 "other" Marketing

$ 5,000 awards and prizes

$ 625,446 Executive Management team (5.5 employees)

dnr.state.co.us/Budget/Page…

rmsusa wrote:If the government were a company, it'd be going out of business. Good thing they have a little bit of ad space to sell for maintenance money. What, exactly is your problem? If it helps them empty the latrines more, I'll gladly use REI toilet paper.

Would you want the government to turn a profit? Wouldn't that by definition mean that they are over-funded?

Jason N. wrote: Would you want the government to turn a profit? Wouldn't that by definition mean that they are over-funded?

It would be pretty tough to figure out if a government agency is over-funded. Their main goal is spend all of their budget on their product. In business, the main goal to is to spend the least amount of money providing a product. I am pretty sure it is frowned upon in gov't agencies if you didn't spend all of your budget.

The Watchdog wrote: ...Rather then transform our State Parks in Disneyland; maybe COParksWildlife could scale back on staples, a few line items from their 2012/2013 budget: $ 97,000 office supplies $ 326,958 postage $ 184,000 printing $ 9,339 Employee moving expense $ 140,296 Advertising $ 12,000 "other" Marketing $ 5,000 awards and prizes $ 625,446 Executive Management team (5.5 employees) ...

I'm not sure how familiar you are with the budgets for institutions that employee 20k+ people but those numbers are amazingly low. I'm guessing they're reusing staples to keep the office supply expense that low.

Lots of things should be changed within the park system. Facilities should be at a minimum, let wilderness be wilderness. Employees should be at a minimum at the parks I frequent there are a high number of rangers that drive around patroling the park all day, that is not necessary. We should have a ranger staffing the office on call in case of emergency. Penalties for vandalism, littering, abuse of wildlife/plant life should be enforced with a no tolerance policy commit any offense that fits this description and a giant chunk of cash should be leaving your wallet. Volunteer caretakers should be in charge of most campgrounds allowed a space to park/camp/no pay they collect the fees and notify the ranger if one needs to be called. If a ranger is called it should be for a significant reason and the no tolerance policy applies-no warnings straight to a hefty fine. The campground caretaker could designate a family area of the campground for those with small children and a party area for those who like to stay up late and get rowdy with thier friends (within reason). Volunteers could also perform many of the duties that park personell are paid to perform. Also organizations like the boy scouts could help with facilities maintenance as payment for thier group getting priviledges within the park: trash removal, painting, emptying of fire pits etc.

Crag Dweller, not sure if you are being intentionally misleading or just have your facts wrong, I just looked at the Budget for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and there are 247.3 people on their payroll.

See for yourself: dnr.state.co.us/Budget/Pages/BudgetRequests.aspx

then click "FY 2012-13 Reports"

nonya wrote:Crag Dweller, not sure if you are being intentionally misleading or just have your facts wrong, I just looked at the Budget for Colorado Parks and Wildlife and there are 247.3 people on their payroll. See for yourself: dnr.state.co.us/Budget/Pages/BudgetRequests.aspx

In a hasty search for info, I misread a report...the 20k number was in reference to the number of jobs created as a result of activities within the parks.

$ 625,446 Executive Management team (5.5 employees)

Over a 100K each? Maybe lay off the executive management team. I'd like to know about their day to day activities.

Here is an interesting link

dnr.state.co.us/Budget/Page…

Flow charts of the employees at all of the agencies managed by the Department of Natural Resources. Scroll down to find Parks and Wildlife

Four people with the title "Business Development" on payroll At P&W

Half dozen or so employees even have assistants...

Hat tip to MountainNewsDesk.com for bringing these links to my attention, good to see a conversation on MP that is more that slinging "facts" from hasty Internet searches...

trix wrote:Lots of things should be changed within the park system. Facilities should be at a minimum, let wilderness be wilderness. Employees should be at a minimum at the parks I frequent there are a high number of rangers that drive around patroling the park all day, that is not necessary.

I agree, that kind of arrangement would be ideal, but that's only for people like us. I'm quite sure that the bulk of park visitors are people who like cushy environments and large vehicles. They might go for hikes but many, many Americans absolutely need one or two showers a day to feel comfortable and they definitely don't like sleeping on hard surfaces or using stinky, dirty toilets. In Colorado and among our user group, we're in a bubble in terms of our lifestyle (such as being OK without showering while camping in the dirt and rain). I often forget what an extreme consumer culture we have in this country and how detached it has become from the raw environment, as most live in cities, where the money is, their entire lives.

Of course the NPS caters to those with the money like anything else in a capitalist economy. So, if the parks want to keep attracting a reliable stream of visitors, they need to have quality facilities and safety (police, because thieves and crime also follow money). Indeed, that is a lot like Disney Land, which is a place many, many Americans love.

I also find Guy H.'s comment — that government's main goal is to spend all its budget on its product, while a private company tries to scrimp as much as possible — to be right on. Thus, I say the park system as it is will keep expanding about as fast as it can attract more income. (Let's not forget government's ever-present goal of creating jobs.)

The people who spend the most money get want they demand, and climbers don't bring in that much money by comparison to your typical RV family that will be buying breakfast in Curry Village. Climbers are thought of as dirt bags for a reason — we're generally very cheap, being savvy with what little we need to get by; and we tend to stick around a lot longer. Basically we use the park* much more heavily AND spend less money there. (*Not so much the facilities, excluding parking, by "use" I mean our demand to access areas like cliffs that are difficult to manage.) In those terms, the NPS views us as a burden, not to mention the attitude it often perceives from us. On the other hand, there are many law-abiding tourists who will happily spend money on nice showers, camp sites ant trinkets, and also stay on the paved path as they walk around for a few days and leave in a timely fashion. These people are the huckleberries of the NPS. So, plan on seeing more cops (rangers), bus/vehicle tours, parking and other sparkling facilities impede upon our precious dirt and pine cones so that more people can line up and snap photos of the horizon that look just like the post cards with as much convenience as ever. At least we'll never be far from an ice-cream stand. Now that's the American government giving the majority what it wants.

The good news is that climbers are a tourist attraction in themselves, so we will always be part of the family. Due to our increasing number and the obsessive nature of our hobby, however, I predict increased friction with the NPS well into the future as the government increasingly tries to restrict the way we use the parks for the sake of a management system that can "preserve" the resource and do so with less money or a financial gain (i.e. more climbing areas and styles will become off-limits or by permit only). Ironically, our increased number also gives us more clout, and so it goes...