EDITORIAL: Timing for park cuts is terrible

Opinion

March 17, 2010

Staff Reports Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Wed Mar 17, 2010, 10:54 PM EDT

NIAGARA FALLS — The nation’s oldest state park here will be impacted as part of Gov. Paterson’s budget-slashing strategy to deal with the staggering fiscal crisis in the Empire State.

While the Niagara Falls State Park will remain open, special interpretive programs and events (e.g., hikes on the gorge trails and nature walks) could be eliminated this year.

It’s ironic that at a time when the regional state park officials should be focusing on the 125th anniversary of the landmark park, established July 15, 1885, the agency is scaling back on activities that visitors and local residents alike might enjoy.

As expected, the uproar from the Albany lawmakers — over the plan for the closings — echoes across the state, from Orient Beach Park at the tip of Long Island to the lakefront Wilson-Tuscarora State Park in Niagara County.

Joseph Davis State Park also is on the governor’s hit list — that should not surprise anyone familiar with the long-neglected park — but that’s hardly a loss.

Fred Bonn, president of the state Association of Convention and Visitor Bureaus, offers a strong argument for the governor’s budget team to look elsewhere for savings.

“From Jones Beach to Niagara Falls, the state parks provide unique and memorable experiences for tourists who enhance the economic vitality of communities they visit,” Bonn says, “Parks are often key attractions that send customers to the businesses on our Main Streets. Customers who shop in our neighbor’s store, eat in the restaurant around the corner and stay in the hotels and bed-and-breakfasts down the street.”

One thing is crystal clear: The park closings will send a negative message to travelers looking to visit New York state which promotes tourism as its No. 2 industry.

Aside from the anger that will probably mount even more as people plan their vacations, there’s yet another valid concern raised by Assemblyman Steve Englebright, D-Setauket, chair of the Committee on Tourism, Parks, Arts and Sports Development.

The veteran lawmakers suggests that a closed park could easily invite vandals as evidenced by the hefty damage that resulted from a lengthy shutdowns of an Erie County park.

At this point, the state Department of Parks has no plans for cutting the grass or trimming the shrubbery in the parks where all vehicles will be barred.

It’s all a sorry chapter in the story of a great treasure in New York — the statewide system that includes 178 parks and 35 historic sites.

Even before the current crisis, many of the parks have been saddled with significant health and safety concerns that should be addressed as well as wide-ranging facilities (cabins, campgrounds, swimming pools, roads and bridges) that are aging and deteriorating.

A shutdown now will only compound those problems.

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