County Commissioners Consider Selling Parks

Colorado Springs, hiking, mountain biking | UltraRob | Sunday, May 25th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

The El Paso county commissioners are considering selling some of our great parks because of budget problems. They are proposing to lay off most parks employees and close 2 nature centers. In 2003 the county parks had $2.3 million from the general fund and with their proposal it will have nothing from the general fund.

This coming Tuesday morning at 9 AM the Board of County Commissioners will take public comment on the proposals. If you can’t make the meeting, you can also contact your commissioner.

Here are the details from the Trails and Open Space Coalition

Board of County Commissioners Work Session, Tuesday, May 27, 2008, 9:00 am, 27 E. Vermijo, 3rd Floor.

The BOCC will take public comments on potential budget cuts for 2008 at this work session. As we all know, the county is facing a severe budget deficit. Part of its solution will severely impact the county parks department. This is your opportunity to show up and express your opinion on the proposed cuts.

Essentially, the proposal will zero out the general fund support for parks leaving the department to survive only on a small lottery allocation and developer fees. This would save approximately $560,000. In 2003, the department was operating with a $2.3M general fund budget.

Here are the proposed cuts:

Lay off 5 general fund full time staff members ($168,000), close Bear Creek and Fountain Creek Nature Centers including laying off 5 full time staff members ($170,000), cancelling all landscape contracts and trying to do the work internally ($67,000), further reducing operations by $155,000, laying off 5 lottery full time staff members ($110,000 – not part of the $560,000).

They have also been asked to review the potential sale of park property.

We have a spectacular county park system used by thousands of residents and visitors. Losing this number of employees will take away years of experience that cannot be replaced. The department will become a maintenance only department operating in essentially a caretaker operation. Is this what we want? No.