CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 2018, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“HOW SAFE ARE STATE PARKS?”
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 2018, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“HOW SAFE ARE STATE PARKS?”
From Anderson Marsh State Historic Park in Lake County and Woodson Bridge State Recreation Area on the Sacramento River in Tehama County. From the vast Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in San Diego County to Point Lobos State Reserve in Monterey County and Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.
View
California’s far-flung 280-unit State Park system either alphabetically or
geographically, and you see a resource unparalleled in any other state and hard
to match in any nation around the world. There are dune buggy tracks in the
deserts and pristine redwood groves near the North Coast. Historic resources
from the oldest active Chinese temple in the West to the Pio Pico House in
downtown Los Angeles.
What
they have in common is a commitment for preservation by the state and a
responsibility for the safety of the more than 60 million persons who use them
yearly.
Even
before the late June shooting death of a father of two from Irvine while fast
asleep in a campground at Malibu Creek State Park near Calabasas, there was
reason to question the safety and upkeep of the State Park system.
A
reader from Davis wrote this column just after that unsolved murder complaining
of “the terror tales about broken bathrooms, broken picnic tables, impassable
trails due to fallen trees,” but griped most harshly about “the total lack of
security due to the paucity of rangers, particularly overnight.”
It
turns out the reader was absolutely correct. For this year, the Parks
Department reports, it has 484 peace officer rangers on duty. That’s 72 fewer
than in 2012. It’s an average of less than two rangers per park unit, charged
with protecting the parks and their visitors 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
That’s almost an impossible task.
Months
before the murder at Malibu Creek, the rangers’ organization, the Resource
Protection Peace Officers Assn., complained online about not having enough
people to contend with stabbings, domestic violence, jogger assaults, the
occasional high speed chase and, rarely, shootings.
Stopping
short of actually admitting it has a safety problem, the Parks Department now
says a budget increase it just received will allow expansion of its force to
more than 600 peace officer rangers by the end of the fiscal year next summer.
Reported
Gloria Sandoval, the department’s deputy director for communications,
“California State Parks is actively taking steps to fill 88 vacant peace
officer positions,” pointing to a recruiting campaign launched in April aiming
to hire those 88 and another 54 authorized in the new budget. “That would be
626 peace officer positions authorized and expected to be filled by the end of
the current budget year.”
This
would still be less than three rangers per park unit. When some parks expand to
populations of 8,000 or more on holiday weekends, the parks can’t provide
anything like comprehensive patrols and protection.
But
that’s probably inevitable for this stepchild of a state agency, one with
enormous responsibilities but very few funds to carry them out. That status is
one reason the department depends heavily on volunteer campground hosts in full-fledged
state parks and volunteer park hosts in many other locations.
Says
the Parks Department website, “Volunteer host positions are available in over
100 parks. Host duties vary according to each park but generally include
providing visitor information, staffing visitor centers and museums,
maintenance projects and general housekeeping. Most hosts work approximately 20
hours a week and, in exchange for those services, the hosts are provided with a
campsite during their stay.”
That’s
a lot of benefits to the state and its park users for no money at all.
The
volunteers are not equipped to maintain park facilities from picnic tables to
rest rooms. So as budgets shrank during the recession and afterward, some parks
became decrepit, almost derelict. Not the best way to present California to its
millions of visitors.
The
Parks Department insists it has now begun fighting its way back, with a budget
almost $200 million higher than six years ago at recession’s end. That and the
increased user fees called for in the same budget should see fresh paint and
smoother plumbing in many places.
But the
number of peace officer rangers remains woefully adequate, even if all open
positions are filled this year.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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