COURSEY: Don't sell our parks short

<p>If a private concessionaire can help keep open state parks such as Sugarloaf Ridge or Hendy Woods or Austin Creek, I'm all for making the deal.</p><p>But let's not just give away this valuable business.</p><p>Thursday's Page 1 story by Derek Moore says the California Public Works Board gave the go-ahead on Wednesday for the state Parks Department to seek bids from private and non-profit concessionaires interested in running campgrounds, restaurants, day-use facilities and other profit centers within dozens of state parks that otherwise are slated for closure on July 1. The plan would require the concessionaire to return a minimum 3 percent of revenues to the state.</p><p>The state should hold out for more.</p><p>By “bundling” park concessions – Sugarloaf, for example, would be included in a contract with five parks in the Central Valley – the Parks Department estimates that each concession contract would represent about $500,000 in annual revenues. A 3-percent return would provide the state about $15,000 a year from each contract.</p><p>I'm willing to bet it will cost the state more than that to administer the contract.</p><p>Turning over public concessions to private companies shouldn't be done lightly, and it shouldn't be done without a real value and adequate return to the public. Keeping the parks open is good, but we shouldn't subsidize private concessions.</p><p>Look to Yosemite National Park for an example. Sugarloaf is no Yosemite, of course – no park can compare. But when the National Park Service went to look for a new concessionaire in 1993 after the Curry Co. had run the park's campgrounds and hotels and other concessions for nearly 100 years, the feds didn't settle for the less-than-one-percent return that Curry had been paying all those years. The new concessionaire, Delaware North Cos., pays more than 20 percent of its annual gross receipts back to the park.</p><p>A similar return on a $500,000 state park concession contract would generate $100,000 a year.</p><p>Maybe 20 percent is an unreasonable amount to ask a concessionaire to pay for running a few campsites and parking areas. But, from the public's side of the equation, 3 percent is too low.</p><p>Let's not sell our parks short.</p><p><i>Chris Coursey's blog offers a community commentary and forum, from issues of the day to the ingredients of life in Sonoma County.</i></p>