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State Park Users Worry About Funding Changes, Higher Fees

Current Language In The State Budget Proposal Would Cut General Revenue To The System

By
Nature Vegans (CC-BY-NC-ND)

Thousands of people are expected to visit Wisconsin State Parks this Saturday and Sunday, but it could be the last Fourth of July weekend in which general state tax dollars help support the parks.

The budget that Republicans on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee approved Thursday includes a provision that zeroes out general tax funding for the parks. If the proposal gets signed into law, it would mean the park system would have to lean more on user fees, grants, and volunteers to continue operating.

State parks already count a lot on volunteers. On a recent Saturday morning at Devil’s Lake State Park near Baraboo, about 10 members of the parks’ “friends group,” under the direction of a park employee, walked carefully through the woods, pulling up invasive garlic mustard plants and putting them in a plastic bag.

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Joan Kaul has volunteered at Devils Lake for many years. She said it’s a wonderful park, albeit crowded at times — it draws 1.5 million visitors a year. But Kaul said it’s also a serene place that deserves upkeep.

“It’s a beautiful area, but if they don’t take care of it — case in point, the garlic mustard, it’ll just take over this area and you won’t have the beautiful flowers and stuff,” Kaul said.

Current budget language would make Wisconsin just one of a handful of states to do away with any general tax revenues for the parks, which could make funding that upkeep a little more complicated. User fees are going up, and there could be other major financial changes down the road a couple years — maybe even a sale of naming rights.

Republican state Sen. Tom Tiffany of Hazelhurst hasn’t granted recent requests for an interview, but during Joint Finance Committee deliberations in May, he summed up the new philosophy.

“Moving to more of a user-based system, I think, is very appropriate. The people that utilize a service, they should pay for that service,” he said.

But Todd Persche, the president of Friends of Devils Lake, said relying more on user fees at a time when some parks have had to defer maintenance projects may be risky.

“You know, for $3 or $4 million, I would rather be certain that we know we’re going to be able to fund this going forward, and to take a chance on this, especially now when there’s so many things going on,” Persche said. “We have a lot of issues that we have to deal with out here. Just seems like the wrong time to be zero-funding your parks.”

Even though naming rights for parks is apparently not in the picture for this year, Persche said they may be coming.

“Those three or four generations that have gotten all our state parks to where they’re at, and now, you’re just going to turn around and sell it to the highest bidder so their name can be on what other people have done?” he said. “There’s no soul in that.”

Persche said he worries that higher camping and park admission fees may discourage some people from using the state parks.

The north beach at Devil’s Lake draws many swimmers, boaters and sunbathers. Kyle Kramer of Des Plaines, Illinois said she and her family often come to the park. But she said that could change if the state of Wisconsin keeps pushing up user fees.

“I hate to see the fees go up because it’s such family-friendly place. We come here with our kids all the time and I think if it was really expensive, we’d probably stop coming,” she said.

Kramer said Illinois has come up with a variety of new park fees and she doesn’t want Wisconsin getting the same ideas.

Some Wisconsinites, like Madison resident Chris Lenzendorf, have a cultural concern. He said the state parks, as they are now, have a certain feel.

“It’s a Wisconsin feel. It’s who we are, it takes us back to our youth,” he said. “Nothing’s changed and the parks haven’t changed. And they shouldn’t change because this is who we are. This is Wisconsin.”

Lenzendorf said he doesn’t care if his state tax bill would be lower if parks funding came from somewhere else. But unless the state Senate, Assembly or governor change gears this month, it appears the state parks are going off general tax dollars.