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I attended a meeting today at which we were discussing the salaries paid to 
members of various agencies.  To be fair, I believe they were County 
agencies, but our county says it's broke, too.  Some of the salaries were 
from $150,000 to $180,000.  Considering that some of these agencies have 
jobs that seem to work at making life difficult for business owners, I would 
think some of those salaries could be reduced a little and the money applied 
to running parks, police, education, health care, et al.  Furthermore, there 
have been studies of the retirement packages some public employees now 
receive...something like 90% of the highest salary within their period of 
duty and the retirement age is comparatively young, as opposed to business 
owners, farmers and others self-employed.

I'm not convinced some of the folks who manage those agencies really deserve 
such generous salaries, but there is naturally great reluctance to reduce 
the salaries.  Of course, no one wants to take a pay cut, but private 
businesses are losing money and thus taking cuts, so why not public service 
employees.  Furthermore, I feel there are far too many agencies and boards 
within the state.  There is either an overlap in duties or some of them are 
not really productive.  I would think a little trimming of overlapping 
agencies would help our state budget a lot.  There is some evidence that the 
state park budget is rather small compared to education, police, health 
care.  I would think that shutting down parks is counter-productive, since 
they do take in fees for use.  I also think that if the parks are closed, 
there will considerable rampant misuse, because people can get in anyway, 
and even with the parks up and running, they are currently being used as 
marijuana gardens in remote areas.  There is considerable concern that they 
will become homes for the homeless, and with sanitation facilities closed 
and locked, the situation could become quite bad.  Vandalism is another 
concern.  An expensive beachside toilet unit was burned down in a nearby 
park.

Another consideration is that parks attract tourists, especially now with 
high fuel prices and the economic crash.  Without parks, where do folks go 
for vacations?  And without the vacationers, where do the nearby towns get a 
good part of their summer revenue?  It's all so intertwined....

Horseback riders will still be able to access our local state parks, but 
they may be closed to endurance rides.

Barbara
in CA





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "k s swigart" <katswig@xxxxxxx>
To: <ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 9:48 AM
Subject: [RC] CA State Parks; what I found out



Management accounting is REALLLLLLLY hard if you have a complicated 
"business" structure like and entire state's economy with all its 
interrelated elements. There may be some substantial "unintended 
consequences" associated with closing the parks. Politicians are really good 
at missing those.

The state would do better to try to figure out ways to cut the expenses of 
operating the parks without closing them...or to charge more for people to 
use them, so they become bigger revenue generators.

kat
Orange County, Calif.
:)



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