The following information was received from Woody Elliot, State Park Resource Ecologist, and may be of interest to many of our constituents. A meeting was held on February 17; unfortunately our newsletter schedule did not allow us to get this information to our members in a timely manner.

On March 7, California's voters will have the opportunity to vote on Proposition 12, a $2.1 billion bond for state and local parkland in California. This bond will provide the State Park System with more than $500 million for park rehabilitation, restoration, and acquisition, and it will provide local parks with nearly a billion in grants for their parkland needs. The remainder of the funds are assigned to other state agencies and conservancies.

The California State Park System includes 265 parks on more than 1.3 million acres. It includes some of the most prominent state beaches, parks, historic sites, and recreation areas in California. It is a system as diverse as our golden state and it is a system with many needs.

Many state park facilities are old and in need of repair or replacement, and many of our parks, especially newer units, lack the facilities that make them more accessible or serviceable to the public. For this reason, California State Parks estimates that it has more than $1 billion in facility and other infrastructure needs. The bond funds allotted to the State Park System will go primarily toward repairing and improving existing parks, such as controlling alien weeds, restoring native riparian habitats along the Sacramento River, and protecting archeological resources around Lake Oroville.

However, California has more threatened and endangered species than any other state, and is also the home of spectacular redwood forests that provide habitat for many of these species. For this reason, the bond provides $50 million for crucial habitat conservation and an additional $10 million (on a matching basis) for redwood forests. It also funds projects for various state conservancies, and gives us flexibility to use additional funds to acquire in-holdings or parcels adjacent to existing state parks on a willing-seller basis; these additional funds could be used to purchase parcels with high recreational and/or cultural values, especially along the Sacramento River Conservation Area.

The Department of Parks and Recreation is also responsible for distributing local park grants. Under Proposition 12, the Department will allocate more than $820 million in three per-capita grant programs and ten competitive grant programs to local agencies for park and recreation purposes, such as developing new ball fields or replacing old and unsafe playground equipment. More than $2.2 million will be allocated to Butte County.