Peacock,Madison,and Troy CLOSED?!!!

[Kelly Jessop]

http://audubonoffloridanews.org/

Audubon of Florida News
Department of Environmental Protection Proposes to Close 53 State Parks
posted on January 27, 2011 in Florida's Special Places,Land Conservation

In what has become an annual exercise, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) along with other agencies, yesterday presented to the Legislature reductions they would make if ordered to reduce their budgets by 15%. In a year when the state faces a nearly $4B shortfall, this is likely to be more than just an exercise; and with the high proportion of freshman members, there is less familiarity than past years with the importance of Florida’s environmental programs.

Part of DEP’s proposal last year, which was not adopted, was to close some parks to public access to result in expense savings. This year, this proposal includes an unprecedented 53 state parks which garner the least attendance and do not have camping, despite being economic engines in some of Florida’s smallest and most rural communities.

Additionally, three parks—Egmont Key, Three Rivers and Forest Capital—are proposed to be returned to their primary owners, whether or not those owners have the capacity to manage them for conservation and public access.

Wednesday in the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Committee, members seemed concerned but not willing to simply remove these cuts from the table. One suggested these lands should be sold to put them back on county tax rolls. Another suggested enlisting cash-strapped local governments to manage them. A third suggested closing them “except on weekends.”

The list of proposed park closures is below. Are these some of the places you would consider among Florida’s Special Places? Tell us why these sites are important to you, and share that with your legislators too. The House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee and Senate General Government Appropriations Committee will be the first to consider which cuts they will accept.

Of course, more reductions were proposed in DEP as well as the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee and other important conservation programs. Be sure you are subscribed to Audubon’s Advocate e-newsletter to receive our thorough summary at the end of this and each committee week, through the State Legislative Session.

The 53 Florida State Parks
•Allen David Broussard Catfish Creek Preserve State Park, Haines City
•Atlantic Ridge Preserve State Park, Stuart
•Big Shoals State Park, White Springs
•Bulow Plantation Ruins Historic State Park, Flagler Beach
•Camp Helen State Park, Panama City Beach
•Cedar Key State Museum State Park, Cedar Key
•Colt Creek State Park, Lakeland
•Constitution Convention Museum State Park, Port St. Joe
•Crystal River Archaeological State Park, Crystal River
•Dade Battlefield Historic State Park, Bushnell
•Dagny Johsnon Key Largo Hammock Botanical State Park, Key Largo
•Deer Lake State Park, Santa Rosa Beach
•Devil’s Millhopper Geological State Park, Gainesville
•Don Pedro Island State Park, Boca Granda
•Dudley Farm Historic State Park, Newberry
•Dunn’s Creek State Park, Pomona
•Estero Bay Preserve State Park, Estero
•Fort Cooper State Park, Inverness
•Fort George Island Cultural State Park, Jacksonville
•Fort Mose Historic State Park, St. Augustine
•John Gorrie Museum State Park, Apalachicola
•Judah P. Benjamin Confederate Memorial at Gamble Plantation Historic State Park, Ellenton
•Lake Jackson Mounds Archaeological State Park, Tallahassee
•Lake June-in-Winter Scrub State Park, Sebring
•Lake Talquin State Park, Tallahassee
•Letchworth-Love Mounds Archaeological State Park, Tallahassee
•Lignumvitae Key Botanical State Park, Islamorada
•Madison Blue Spring State Park, Lee
•Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park, Cross Creek
•Natural Bridge Battlefield Historic State Park, Woodville
•Olustee Battlefield Historic State Park, Olustee
•Orman House Historic State Park, Apalachicola
•Paynes Creek Historic State Park, Bowling Green
•Peacock Springs State Park, Luraville
•Perdido Key State Park, Pensacola
•Ponce de Leon Springs State Park, Ponce de Leon
•Pumpkin Hill Creek Preserve State Park, Jacksonville
•Rock Springs Run State Reserve, Sorrento
•San Felasco Hammock Preserve State Park, Alachua
•San Marcos de Apalache Historic State Park, St. Marks
•Savannas Preserve State Park, Jensen Beach
•St. Lucie Inlet Preserve State Park, Stuart
•St. Sebastian River Preserve State Park, Fellsmere
•Suwannee River Wilderness Trail/Nature and Heritage Tourism Center, White Springs
•Terra Ceia Preserve State Park, Palmetto
•The Barnacle Historic State Park, Coconut Grove
•Troy Spring State Park, Branford
•Wacasassa Bay Preserve State Park, Cedar Key
•Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, Palm Coast
•Werner-Boyce Salt Springs State Park, Port Richey
•Windley Key Fossil Reef Geological State Park, Islamorada
•Ybor City Museum State Park, Tampa
•Yellow River Marsh Preserve State Park, Holt

[JahJahwarrior]

And this just after they refused to keep charging us a rate we were perfectly happy paying, of $15 per diver per day. Is it any surprise? Should they perhaps hire a businessman to run things? There is no excuse for closing parks, just run them right!

[OFG-1]

And this just after they refused to keep charging us a rate we were perfectly happy paying, of $15 per diver per day. Is it any surprise? Should they perhaps hire a businessman to run things? There is no excuse for closing parks, just run them right!

You have to be joking. There was pages of pure bile puked all over the place about the diving fee. That is why they gave up on it. It had nothing to do with anything except a bunch of disgruntled people complaining.

If all of you are willing to pay the fee, then the time to offer it up is now!

[LiteHedded]

You have to be joking. There was pages of pure bile puked all over the place about the diving fee. That is why they gave up on it. It had nothing to do with anything except a bunch of disgruntled people complaining.

If all of you are willing to pay the fee, then the time to offer it up is now!

well they certainly have us all by the balls now.
I'm willing to pay it.

[OFG-1]

well they certainly have us all by the balls now.
I'm willing to pay it.

They don't have you by anything. They can just close the parks.

What the hell do you guys think was happening? The state has been living off federal stimulus money for two budget years. The same money that everyone has pissed and moaned about ad nausium. Now, the stimulus funding is gone, what do you think is happening?

And this is just a part of the hatchet job that is going on in the state budget. Sit back and watch, you are going to have cabinet level departments dismantled, hundreds of jobs go away, University and school funding cut, employee pensions cut, Medicare cut, prison budgets cut, law enforcement cuts... basically, all of it. It would shock me greatly if they give money to parks and then take it from law enforcement or medicare.

Someone needs to co-ordinate a rational, well reasoned response that the entire cave diving community can support. Good luck.

[kmev]

If they allowed solo diving and stayed open later than 4:30 I would visit them more.

[billyf]

I thought that Troy, PSP, LB & MB had a small cache of rangers that went from park to park.
So if they close 3 of the 4 parks are they not going to still have the same cost of operation?
We should also look at how many pass holders that will no longer purchase an annual pass once these parks are closed.
I for one will no longer need my annual pass, how about you?

[DA Aquamaster]

They don't have you by anything. They can just close the parks.

What the hell do you guys think was happening? The state has been living off federal stimulus money for two budget years. The same money that everyone has pissed and moaned about ad nausium. Now, the stimulus funding is gone, what do you think is happening?

Absolutely. 46 states nation wide are facing significant budget cuts, and Florida's 4 billion deficit is far better than many other states from both per capita and total dollars perspectives.

Stimulus funding never stimulated anything - because most states used it to supplant state appropriated funding and in doing so abosrbed much of the impact the poor economy had on their tax revenues. In the long view, that was a really bad idea as it did nothing over the last two years to turn the economy around. (But to be fair when we continue to poor two billion plus dollars per week that we don;t really have into the sandbox, I'm not sure creating more jobs etc, would have made any difference.) As it is, stimulus funding delayed the hit on state services by two years, but states are going to feel it full force over the next fiscal year.

I am pretty non partisan as working in Washington has demonstrated to me that Democrat or Republican, it's more about following party dogma and supporting various special interest groups that get politicians elected than it is making wise decisions in the interest of the country or living up to a promise of government for the people by the people.

At the heart of the issue is the very naive and very entitled attitude among most of the public that we can hold the line on taxes or even cut taxes and still demand to maintain the same previous level of services. That is simply not the case, and while we all conmplain about how badly politicans run the country, we keep electing them, we keep tolerating a system that leaves politicians tootally beholden to special interest groups and bug business interests, and we keep insisting on high levels of service but refuse to pay more in taxes. The fact is when you consider medicaid/medicare, social security, interest on the federal debt and our expenditures for the war on terror, we could eliminate all the discretionary spending (i.e. everything else) in the budget, not just freeze it, and we still could not balance the federal budget. So even at best, we are going to have endure tax increases or significant decreases in services to stop the current budgetary slide.

[RN]

You have to be joking. There was pages of pure bile puked all over the place about the diving fee. That is why they gave up on it. It had nothing to do with anything except a bunch of disgruntled people complaining.

If all of you are willing to pay the fee, then the time to offer it up is now!

The problem with the fee change last summer was that many of us had just purchased annual passes under the old rules that the annual pass covered entry for diving. Then the state changed the rules without grandfathering in current pass holders. I would gladly pay an increased fee for diving. But I wouldn't also purchase an annual because I don't visit the parks for any other reason.


I think the issue here with many of these parks on the list is that they are frequented by annual pass holders more than daily purchasers. What the state needs to do is find out how much revenue they would lose in annual pass sales by closing these parks. They might be surprised.

Also, don't forget, this isn't the first time the state has proposed mass state park closures. This is an issue that comes up every year or so. When/if we can save Peacock, Madison, and Troy, we then need to focus on showing the state how much we use those parks throughout the year so they do not get placed on this list next time. This is an ongoing issue that needs to be continually addressed, not just an issue we become outraged at once a year.

[jj1987]

You have to be joking. There was pages of pure bile puked all over the place about the diving fee. That is why they gave up on it. It had nothing to do with anything except a bunch of disgruntled people complaining.

If all of you are willing to pay the fee, then the time to offer it up is now!

John, the people were upset because the annual pass they had paid for was not being honored for the activity in which they intended to use it at the time of purchase. I paid for an annual pass primarily to dive, so if that privilege becomes revoked, I'm going to be pissed.

That being said, I'd gladly pay extra $$$ for a diving pass, even though I don't dive state parks all that often.