Dropping park fees a double-edged sword

Today is bittersweet at Riverside State Park.

Rangers are as happy as park visitors to see the end of the $5 daily parking fee throughout the Washington State Parks system. But who will pay to keep the parks open?

State parks stopped requiring the parking permits this week after the legislation abolishing the three-year-old fee program was signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

“We’ll be yanking out the pay stations next week,” said Rene Wiley, Riverside’s park manager, noting that park rangers never relished writing tickets to visitors who didn’t display vehicle parking permits.

Also today, Riverside State Park is among 100 parks across the country to receive a $10,000 grant from Recreational Equipment, Inc.

REI said it’s sharing some of the windfall from the co-op’s most successful year.

“REI values the role that parks play in our lives,” said Sally Lodato, manager of the Spokane store. REI sponsored Spokane-area projects last year that generated 2,800 hours of volunteer work to improve local parks and recreation areas, she said.

The check will be presented this morning to Wiley and Ken Carmichael of the Riverside State Park Foundation, which will administer the funds for park projects.

An interpretive water trail from Plese Flats to Nine Mile Dam is among the first priorities identified by the park’s advisory board, Wiley said. The board also wants to improve the “airstrip” staging site where group activities such as mountain bike races are staged.

But that’s just a scant sampling of the park’s needs, and the reason for some uneasiness about the future of state parks across the state.

In 2003, with no funding increases in sight from the Washington Legislature, the Parks and Recreation Commission adopted the $5 daily parking fee to help keep parks operating.

“This is the last thing any of us ever wanted to do,” commission member Clyde Anderson of Spokane told me after the decision was made.

The fees were not adopted soon enough to save four Eastern Washington parks that were liquidated in 2003. Crow Butte, Chief Timothy, Lyons Ferry and Central Ferry were turned over to the Corps of Engineers or private enterprises.

The state invested $3 million to get the parking fee system operating in the remaining 120 state parks.

The new fee hit home hardest at park sites people have grown accustomed to using on a whim. Annual statewide parks visitation dropped from about 45 million in 2002 to about 37 million last year. With the fees abolished, state officials expect visitation to increase, but that won’t necessarily generate much revenue.

Similar to charges at parks in all the other Western states, the parking fees raised $11.5 million to bolster the Washington State Parks Department’s $45 million-a-year budget. Riverside State Park collected $52,000 in parking fees in 2004, the last year for which numbers are available.

Just as the state parks were making progress in reducing the system’s maintenance backlog from $40 million to about $22 million, the legislature removed a major funding source while making no provisions to replace it.

So it’s a good thing that park rangers no longer have to waste time writing parking tickets.

That will give them more time to prepare for the raffles and bake sales.

Sno-Park unchanged: The Sno-Park passes required at plowed winter recreation access areas such as Mount Spokane’s cross country ski and snowmobile trails were not affected by the elimination of parking fees at state parks.

“We’ll continue to require Sno-Park permits as long as we’re plowing snow,” said Steven Christensen, Mount Spokane State Park Ranger.

Cross country ski trails will continue to be groomed into mid-April, depending on weather, with a Ginzugroomer pulled by a snowmobile. The snowcat groomer is being mothballed for the season.

Wild dining: Most of the friends attending our private annual wild-game feed last weekend have recovered after consuming enough meat in one sitting to rival the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

We invite a few token non-hunters each year to assure that at least one vegetable or salad graces the table. We used to ask a few people to bring “greens,” but we’ve had to be more specific after one guy thought that was an excuse to salvage the sausage that got lost in the back of his pickup cab during the fall season.

One of the best items on the table, ranking right up there with Wendy Thompson’s huckleberry pie, was Alan Liere’s baked steelhead. He cut out the backbone and ribs, stuffed the cavity with Stove-Top dressing that he’d jazzed up with a pound-and-a-half of diced scallops, then baked it uncovered until the meat flaked and the skin was crusty.

Simple enough for camp, yet good enough to get raves at home.