What’s the logic of building a facility that you can’t afford to
operate?
What’s the logic of building a facility that you can’t afford to operate?
That’s the situation in Henry W. Coe State Park. In 2004, the state authorized a new visitor’s center seven miles from the park’s Highway 152 entrance. The $2.5 million Dowdy Ranch Visitor’s Center sits because the state hasn’t budgeted any money to staff it.
Why build it if no one can use it? But the empty center is just a microcosm of the funding woes afflicting Coe Park.
“We’ve gotten to the point where we can’t even keep the park open. It just wouldn’t be safe for the public,” Park Ranger Barry Breckling said. “We’ve been in pretty poor shape.”
Why does Breckling issue such a dire prediction? Take a look at the numbers.
Coe is the second-largest state park in California, with 87,000 open acres filled with beautiful mountain ridges, lakes and vistas. Two full-time rangers are assigned to the vast park. Do the math, and the obvious becomes laughable. Who, for example, could possibly ensure that the elk in the park are not game for poachers?
The park’s other visitor’s center, at Pine Ridge near the park’s Dunne Avenue entrance east of Morgan Hill, is staffed with the help of 140 volunteers, but they barely cover that facility’s operating hours.
Coe is a part of the Gavilan Sector of state parks, which includes Fremont Peak and San Juan Bautista parks. Last year, all of the Gavilan Sector parks split just $36,000 for seasonal help for maintenance and visitor’s services.
Statewide, the state has deferred $250 million worth of maintenance at parks, but last year budgeted a mere $16.4 million for lifeguards and maintenance workers.
The state spent $2.5 million on a building it can’t afford to operate or maintain, in a park with maintenance deferrals that threaten visitor safety.
It behooves our governor and our state legislators to see the folly in this and work to direct sufficient state funds to Coe Park to protect taxpayer’s investments there.
In the meantime, we hope that the fabulous volunteers who work at the Pine Ridge Visitor’s Center can expand their membership and service hours to include staffing the new Dowdy Ranch Visitor’s Center. But the state should be required to have a long-term funding plan for any new facility or purchase. It’s utterly shameful to waste money building a visitor’s center that nobody can visit.
