Arizona May Permanently Shut Two-Thirds its State Parks
By Rocky Thompson on January 15th, 2010
A group of Arizona legislators are offering a short-sighted, permanent solution to a temporary problem. Budget woes are on the brink of forcing the closing of two-thirds of the state parks in Arizona. Tombstone Courthouse, the Yuma Territorial Prison, and Red Rock State Park would be among those affected. City councils are angered that closing parks will keep out tourists’ money, and anyone with common sense shares their sense of injustice. Gov. Schwarzenegger tried the same thing last year in California, but backed off when park lovers protested. Hopefully Arizona can muster the same level of outrage.
At least it’s Arizona and not Utah! I’d rather be in Canyonlands than the Grand Canyon any day. It would be nice to be able to see them both, though…
That land does not exclusively belong to the current elected officials. It belongs to us and our children’s children! Long after the current problems are gone we will never forgive ourselves for being so short-sighted.
HANDS OFF of our public lands!
Uh, Canyonlands and Grand Canyon are National parks, not state parks.
The problem with both is that the feds, and most states, use park entry fees (and often state hunting license fees too) as a giant cash register, draining them off for a variety of purposes. In Utah, it’s to make up for all the corporate tax breaks our legislators hand out to whoever dangles inflated job and property tax figures in their face. In Arizona, much of it is siphoned off to make up for all the retiree tax breaks. Both give away huge tax bases to ‘agricultural’ welfare-grazing exemptions.
In places where state parks aren’t closing, they’re getting expensive to enter, usually with little benefit to the visitor unless you’re visiting “This Is The Place/Joseph Smith Glorification State Park,” or one of the motorboat ponds with their concrete ramps, RV hookups and dump stations.
National park fees used to get siphoned off into the general fund, but now, after legislation to keep funds ‘at the parks’, they tend to get starved by the useless overhead expense of regional and national offices - which do nothing other than shuffle paper and manage dress codes.
I’d close Arizona and just leave the parks open…as a former resident.