State Parks Must Now Compete With Open Space, et al for Far Smaller Pot of Money
Scott Fallon at the Bergen Record wrote a story today about how projects must now compete for a smaller pot of open space funding, see:
The story adds additional new facts to show just how bad a deal the Keep It Green coalition negotiated.
Voters were not told about any of what Fallon writes about, such as the new competition for funds, the much smaller pot of money compared to historic funding levels, and the backlogged need.
To his credit, Fallon has written previously about what KIG refused to tell voters during their $700,000 marketing campaign, i.e. the diversion of funds from environmental programs, including water quality, toxic site cleanup, brown fields, underground storage tank cleanup, diesel air pollution, and State Parks.
That reporting prompted the Record to editorialize against the open space ballot question and urge voters to “read the fine print”.
But, in a larger sense, Fallon completely missed the real story about why there is a new competition for funds and he was spun by other Keep It Green cover stories.
As I’ve written several times now, the new competition for a much smaller pot of money is between State parks projects and open space, farmland preservation, historic preservation, and blue acres projects.
I fired off this LTE to try to clarify that:
Dear Editor:
The story: “Demand for open space funding may force N.J. projects to compete with each other” (11/11/14) completely missed the essential point about how projects must now compete with each other.
The new open space funding approved by the voters was a radical departure from prior funding plans approved by voters 13 times over 50 years.
For the first time, the voters approved diversion of existing environmental funds, including $32 million per year Constitutionally dedicated to State Parks in 2006 for capital improvements, including money for addressing a $400 million backlog in deferred maintenance. Our State parks are literally crumbling.
That means that State Parks must now competed with Open Space, historic preservation, farmland preservation, and blue acres projects for a far smaller pot of funds (from $71 to $117 million dollars).
Passage of the open space ballot prompted State Park Director Mark Texel to write this note to the Keep It Green Coalition that spent $700,000 or more promoting the ballot question:
“As the Director of the NJ State Park Service now coping with the reality that our entire Parks capital budget will be completely eliminated beginning July 1, 2015 as a result of the YES vote I can say this is the darkest day I have faced in my professional career. Worse than Superstorm Sandy. 440,000+ acres of preserved open space, 52 historic sites, 39 parks — used by 8 million visitors each year — all managed by my agency and now with no funding plan in place for stewardship beginning in just 7 months. This is not a bad reality TV show. This is New Jersey’s Inconvenient Truth hidden from voters throughout this campaign.”
Please tell readers the truth about how this new open space program will harm our State parks.