OLYMPIA – It’s only $5, but try slapping that daily parking fee on people who visit Washington’s state parks, and some patrons go ballistic.
And legislators, who don’t like to intentionally irritate their constituents, get the blame.
In the three years since the state imposed the fee with the Legislature’s blessings, park attendance is way off, and lawmakers are ready to recant their decision.
“I just think it was an experiment that failed,” said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, who calls repeal of the day-use fee her personal top priority for this legislative session.
The only question is how to replace the lost millions. For the moment, the plan is to dip into the state’s budget surplus and then look for a permanent revenue source next year for the popular but financially strapped system of 120 parks.
Park visitors grouse about having to pay the fee even if it’s just a brief visit to jog, walk the beach or catch a sunset. The $50 fee for an annual permit can be even more daunting for those on fixed incomes.
“The attitude people have is ‘We own the parks; we already paid for them with our taxes and the property is ours,’” said park activist Nora Porter of Port Townsend, who is leading a lobbying blitz this session to roll back the fee.
The state’s long tradition of free day use of parks probably explains a lot of the resentment, said Jim King, director of Citizens for Parks and Recreation, a statewide advocacy group.
“If you were designing a park system from scratch today, you would include a user fee,” he said. “But people see it as one of the few benefits from the state that is free. It would be like charging an entrance fee at the library.”
The fee, which is scheduled to rise to $7 a day or $70 for an annual decal, has had a rocky history, as has financial support for the parks.
As of December, the fee has brought in $11.5 million. It cost about $3 million to set up the collection system and to hire about 55 employees statewide. The park agency has a two-year budget of $90 million.
During the first two years, the money was used to whittle away the maintenance backlog. In the current budget, it helps finance basic operations.
Unpopular? Attendance has dropped more than 7 million since the day-use charge was begun, from 45.4 million a year down to 38.1 million.
State park officials concede the fee remains unpopular, but said people are getting used to it and that day usage shows signs of rebounding. Some of the falloff may have been caused by other factors, such as the recession, gas prices, forest fires and bad weather, they said.
Soon after the fee was imposed, Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, and other lawmakers began agitating for repeal.
“There is just no support out there – people believe that parks are something everyone is entitled to, that it’s a benefit of being a taxpayer and a resident of this state,” Sheldon said in a recent interview.
But the repeal wasn’t taken seriously until this year, when the treasury became temporarily awash in money.
As state Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, put it, “It’s difficult to ask people for five bucks when we’ve got a $1.45 billion surplus.”
Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, both House and Senate budget leaders and Gov. Chris Gregoire are on board with the repeal, Kessler said.
But repeal scares the parks agency and advocates, because it’s not clear how the money will be replaced.
Derr said the park system has finally stabilized and that even with assurances of new money, he’ll be nervous.
For the short term, Kessler and the governor support using $3.4 million of the budget surplus and laying off 22 workers to offset the loss.
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