Texas officials look to Arkansas for park model

Grappling with burgeoning repair lists and fettered by insufficient funding, Texas state parks leaders and supporters turn to successful state park systems for direction.

"At one point, Arkansas had been in a situation similar to Texas — laying off employees and restricting operational hours," said Evelyn Merz, Sierra Club Lone Star's Houston Group Chair who organized a special forum on the parks' crisis earlier this year.

Arkansas found its long-term solution in voter involvement, she said.

"Voters think the agencies are receiving the right amount of money, and they didn't realize there was a problem," Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism director Richard Davies told people at the forum.

In Texas, voters are partly to blame for the deplorable condition of Texas' 114 state park sites, which function on a $56 million annual budget, according to George Bristol, president of Texas Coalition for Conservation.

"The blame can and should be spread around to all of us: citizens, media and elected officials, local and state," Bristol said in an e-mail interview. "Only when the situation reached crisis level last December when our parks and programs had to be curtailed with the layoff of 73 additional personnel did the hue and cry go up across the state."

It will take an additional $100 million to put Texas State Parks back into the shape visitors expect, a specially appointed taskforce told Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners earlier this month.

It's important people understand, Merz said, that state parks are an asset that brings people to rural areas they normally wouldn't visit — such as the Texas State Railroad in Rusk she visited this spring.

"I am beginning to get the uneasy feeling that we are losing visitation of tourists from other states, and we will be hard pressed to get them back," Bristol said. "That is a shame because the variety of our state park experiences used to be and should be one of our great calling cards for people to visit Texas. That shame is compounded, because our nearly 10 million visitors generate about $1.25 billion annually in economic activity which benefits local merchants and retailers."

Getting voter support behind these historical and natural treasures requires demonstration of need and transparency in how public money is already being used.

"Voters must be assured that there will be spending oversight, and the money will go to where it is needed," he said. "As much as possible, the voters need to be told exactly where the money is going. In the parks' case, that should be park by park, project-by project, and year-by-year."

Even after securing additional funding through the passage of a 0.125 percent sales tax constitutional amendment in 1996 that brings in $25 million annually, Davies stressed the need for continued public support — as another vote of the people could just as quickly end this revenue stream.

"Documenting what has been done and publicizing it are key ingredients to keeping public support. Folks have very short memories," Davies said.

Breaking the cycle

After 25 years of courting hikers, backpackers, canoeists, and birdwatchers to the "Natural State," tourism has become the No. 3 industry in Arkansas, the smallest state west of the Mississippi, Davies said.

Arkansas had to break its 20-year-boom-and-bust cycle that began after the Civilian Conservation Corps' kick-start to American public parks and forests, he said.

"A crisis for a park system doesn't usually just happen overnight," Davies said in a follow-up e-mail interview last week. "What happens in many places, Arkansas included, is that parks get built, and then the money to maintain them doesn't follow."

Texas' parks have a backlog of $21 million in just bathroom repairs, Bristol said. In a national survey, Bristol found Texas is 49th out of 50 in per capita investment in parks — and dropping.

"Parks get built, they aren't properly maintained until there is a crisis, money is appropriated to fix them up, and a bunch of new parks get added at the same time," Davies said. "The cycle then repeats, and the problem is larger. That's what happened to us."

Arkansas' $45 million maintenance backlog accrued by the mid-1980s quadrupled to $177 million within a decade.

"Legislature would add parks, but not add the funds necessary to operate and maintain them. Maintenance costs do not go away at the end of the fiscal year — they build up and multiply," he said describing a roof in disrepair that leads to ceiling disrepair, followed by ruined flooring until "finally, someone pays attention."

Meanwhile, the parks were experiencing increasing usage.

"What that created was a long-term bleeding of the system's assets in order to keep the doors open," he said.

Like Texas, the Arkansas park system, which was originally funded through general revenue tax dollars, experienced its share of state-mandated budget cuts which increased their dependence on revenue — camping fees, lodging rentals, boat rentals, and retail sales, Davies said.

Where Texas parks once drew income from a cigarette sales tax, Arkansas was appropriated a portion of an increase in the real estate transfer tax — "which was very helpful, but wasn't nearly enough," Davies said.

Legislators were invited to visit state parks to see the needs.

"Their conclusion was that the problems were real, but they didn't have any money to help," he said.

They estimated what was needed to catch up over a 10-year period, determined how much was needed annually to provide that and had legislators present it to the voters in the 1996 constitutional amendment election which passed.

The new funds were applied to construction, renovation, and replacement of equipment, and then as the backlog needs were met, funding was to be shifted to operational and maintenance costs, thereby putting an end to the cycle.

Park-generated revenue is still important to Arkansas, though.

"Our (parks) commission expects us to run revenue producing facilities as if they were private businesses. If marinas make money in the private sector, then so should ours."

However, he said, profitable state parks are rare because, unlike a business, they must provide their own infrastructure and law enforcement.

Citizen-led solutions

In an attempt to patch a failing funding stream 13 years ago, the Texas legislature replaced the declining cigarette sales tax with the sporting goods sales tax. It limited the potential revenue for parks to $35 million per biennium and then appropriating $20 million of that to the parks.

Bristol said voters should ask why money intended for parks is being spent on other projects.

"An aroused citizenry is the only way that parks will receive substantial and sustainable funding," Bristol said, adding that the parks need between $90 million and $100 million a year.

Even if the sporting goods sales tax cap is lifted, parks should secure their future in a diverse portfolio as Florida has done with trust funds and other sources, Merz said.

"Only with the voice of the people demanding it will the restorative mechanism be initiated," said Beth McDonald, president of Texans for State Parks.