Have Funky Fridays at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park gotten too big?

Steve Meacham and his wife, Christine, had settled in for a recent Friday night show at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park when the Sonoma couple noticed something odd. People were being turned away from the outdoor amphitheater, despite the hillside venue being only half-full.

“We had no idea what was going on,” Steve Meacham said.

The couple are regular attendees at a summer concert series known as Funky Fridays, which was started in 2013 by a Kenwood couple who wanted to save the park from closure during a budgetary crisis. The concert series has blossomed into the park’s largest fundraising event, drawing hundreds each week for live music and barbecue. But suddenly, and without warning, the gates were being shut.

Behind the scenes, concerns had been raised about whether the concerts’ popularity was coming at the expense of Sugarloaf’s pristine environmental setting. A state association representing current and former state park employees contacted officials at California State Parks, who in turn acted swiftly in ordering a cap on attendance at the concerts, starting with the July 24 performance attended by the Meachams.

The result was that dozens of people who had traveled the winding road to reach the park near Kenwood were turned away. A similar scenario played out Friday night, as organizers started turning cars away at about 6:30 p.m., though some people could be observed driving past a sign announcing the event was full and entering the park anyway.

The schism reflects age-old tensions at regional, state and national parks over how to balance landscape protection with the development of amenities and attractions to serve visitors. Nationally, the debate has played out on the grandest stages - in Yosemite, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, where grand hotels cater to guests and diversions such as winter snowmobiling and helicopter tours have delighted thousands while raising the hackles of conservationists.

Closer to home, smaller-scale disputes have taken place about the uses of lands set aside by Sonoma County taxpayers.

In the case of Funky Fridays, neither the park’s managers nor State Parks officials raised any red flags as the event’s popularity grew beyond what organizers originally envisioned and more revenue poured in. But now panic has set in, leaving the future of the outdoor concert series in doubt.

The cap of 125 people represents less than half of the attendance for Funky Friday events. A July 3 concert drew 511 people, establishing a new record, according to event organizers. They lament the timing of the state’s decision, which comes midway through the summer concert series after acts already have been booked. The series concludes Labor Day weekend.

“We’re devastated by this,” said Bill Myers, who along with his wife, Linda Pavlak, started Funky Fridays. “Our whole objective has been to make money for the park, and we’ve been doing that through our marketing and advertising. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished.”

Supporters say events like Funky Fridays and Broadway Under the Stars in Jack London State Historic Park in Glen Ellen represent outside-the-box approaches to raising revenue for parks, at a time when the system is faced with deep structural deficits, including a maintenance backlog estimated at more than $2 billion. Parks Forward, a blue-ribbon task force commissioned to make recommendations for overhauling the state’s moribund parks system, encouraged such novel approaches to fundraising in its final report issued in January.

Predictably, those lofty goals collide with other concerns, such as the impacts of events like Funky Fridays on a park’s natural or cultural resources. More people means more vehicles and more services to support all that funkiness.

The situation also shines a spotlight on the nonprofit organizations, private concessionaires and other groups that have assumed higher-profile roles in the state’s taxpayer-supported parks. Some view the dust-up over Funky Fridays as evidence of entrenched interests, including public employee unions, pushing back on these arrangements as acts of self-preservation, or to influence labor negotiations.

Sugarloaf, Jack London and Austin Creek State Recreation Area in Guerneville are managed by a consortium of local nonprofit groups, which stepped in under a law that allowed the state to negotiate with outside agencies to try to keep open 70 state parks that had been slated to shut in 2012. California State Parks maintains ownership of the sites.

In Sonoma County, the nonprofits expanded entertainment options at outdoor venues to generate public interest and to help cover operating costs. Profits from Funky Fridays doubled in the first two years and were projected to do so again this season. Before the recent controversy, profits were on track to reach $50,000 this season.

Admission to the concerts is $10 for adults, with those under 18 getting in free. Catering is provided by Petaluma-based United Camps, Conferences and Retreats, which also handles reservations for Sugarloaf’s camping sites. Alcohol is not served at the concerts, but patrons are allowed to bring it in.

All of the profits are turned over to Team Sugarloaf - the park’s nonprofit managers. The group last year used the money to purchase a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

“They can use the money for whatever operational expenses they want, and they do,” said Myers, who in addition to starting Funky Fridays with his wife also is a State Parks docent and hiking guide.

The couple, who’ve missed only one Funky Fridays performance in almost three summer seasons, complain that they had little warning about the state’s action, and that they’ve since been kept out of the loop about the event’s status.

“We feel the volunteers and the people who supported the parks the last three years deserve more than this,” Pavlak said.

In the meantime, managers at Sugarloaf and Jack London find themselves on the defensive over their stewardship of the iconic sites.

The California State Park Rangers Association, which represents about 400 current and former State Parks employees, dispatched teams of retired park rangers to tour the two parks in the past two weeks. A representative for the group said its board of directors determined the tours were necessary after some members raised concerns about activities inside the parks potentially affecting natural or cultural resources.

“Are our park resources being protected in the manner that the people of the state of California would demand? Or are there things that are being overlooked in the desire for commercial and revenue enhancement?” said Jeff Price, a retired State Parks ranger and secretary of the Rangers Association.

Price said a couple of retired rangers who had not been in Sugarloaf “in a decade” attended one of the Funky Friday concerts and discovered they were a “new thing.”

“New things are not bad things, but new things that haven’t been properly permitted would be a concern,” Price said. “If I were a park visitor, I would want to be sure that I was going to an approved event.”

Price said he brought concerns about the concert, as well as other things the rangers observed at Sugarloaf and Jack London, to Danita Rodriguez, district superintendent for the Bay Area District of California State Parks. Rodriguez was out of the office last week and unavailable for comment.

Dana Jones, northern division chief for State Parks, denied the agency took action to enforce a cap at Funky Fridays based on concerns raised by the Rangers Association. She said officials acted on their own accord based on observations made by State Parks staff.

She said the Rangers Association “is not working with the department in any way in connection with this.”

Interviews with others involved in the decision and a review of internal emails paint a different picture.

John Roney, a Sonoma Ecology Center employee who manages the park for Team Sugarloaf, alluded in an interview to members of a “park rangers union” visiting the park. He declined to elaborate.

But in a July 22 email obtained by The Press Democrat that Roney sent to event organizers and to Ecology Center staff, he wrote that State Parks officials had ordered the cap to be enforced at Funky Fridays due to concerns raised by the union.

In a subsequent email sent later that day, Roney stated the concerns more succinctly: “The state ranger association is watching and if we do not comply, we are in danger of being shut down completely.”

In fact, the Rangers Association is not a “union” representing the collective bargaining interests of employees. But for 50 years, it has been an influential voice in how state parks are managed.

Price, the association’s secretary, said the group’s concerns with the two Sonoma County parks have nothing to do with labor issues. He said the group also has taken no position on nonprofits operating the parks, an arrangement some observers interpret as a threat to public employees.

“You always want to know the, ‘how come,’ but there’s no knee-jerk reaction with anything to do with employment or union issues,” Price said. “The only concern we have is the only concern we’ve always had, which is the threat to California’s state parks resources.”

Caryl Hart, Sonoma County’s parks director and a member of the Parks Forward commission, sided with that view, saying she does not view the controversy over Funky Fridays through the lens of labor concerns.

“I don’t see that as the underlying issue,” she said.

Rather, she said the problem is about how to address the park system’s chronic funding problems while also preserving the natural resources that attract visitors to the outdoor spaces in the first place.

She said the Sonoma Ecology Center - the lead agency managing Sugarloaf, “is made up of people who care so much about natural resources. They’ve just created an event that’s super popular. We have to figure out how to make it work.”

Whatever the case, both Jones with State Parks and Roney conceded in interviews that the concert series was not in compliance under the terms of an informal 2013 agreement that put a cap on attendance. At the time, Team Sugarloaf estimated attendance at Funky Fridays would be around 80 people. Jones said State Parks signed off on the arrangement with the understanding that park managers would start turning people away if attendance reached 120.

However, that agreement was never formalized. Jones said the terms were hammered out informally in a couple of emails between interested parties.

“I admit, we probably should have caught this earlier on. I don’t know what the issue is with that,” Jones said. “We weren’t watching what was going on.”

Funky Friday organizers expressed disbelief at the arrangement, saying they were never informed about an attendance cap.

“We had no idea that there was a limit of 125 people. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been pursuing our goal of having as many people as the park could hold,” Pavlak said.

She said there have been no problems reported with the staging of the concerts.

Roney said he has submitted paperwork seeking to increase the attendance cap. He did not say by what amount.

Jones said the decision could happen quickly or “take a long time,” depending on the level of environmental review. She said some of the things officials will be reviewing are reports of off-road parking for the Friday night performances, grass mowing in places where it is not approved and potential impacts on bird nesting.

“We may never be able to go to 250 (people) at that site,” she said. “But maybe there is another site in the park or another area where we can look at doing that.”

Asked why things can’t be left as they are while the permit issue is hammered out, Jones suggested the park is at imminent risk of harm from the concert series.

“We should have all of the revenue in the world, but if people trample our parks to bare soil, we won’t have any parks left. It’s a huge balancing act,” she said.

But that also raises the question why State Parks did not intervene sooner.

Some observers view the state’s actions as bureaucratic nit-picking. In an email, Steve Meacham wrote that the situation is “exactly the kind of small minded, unimaginative, rules over people mentality that got State Parks in trouble in the first place.”

But Hart, the county’s parks director, said “rules are the rules.”

“That’s what neighbors say when a winery does a big event that exceeds a cap that doesn’t comply with a permit,” she said. “When you’re in a park like Sugarloaf that has such an important natural value, or Jack London with a cultural value, of course there is a reasonable amount of people who can there.”

Tjiska Van Wyk, executive director of Jack London Park Partners, said Funky Fridays do not have a detrimental environmental impact and that the state should act quickly to raise the attendance cap.

Jack London Park Partners operates the Glen Ellen park under the auspices of the Valley of the Moon Natural History Association, which also is part of the team managing Sugarloaf.

“This is something everyone should be celebrating. It’s a wonderful community event,” Van Wyk said of Funky Fridays.

Van Wyk also offered a defense of activities at Jack London that suddenly have drawn scrutiny. She said the group of retired rangers who toured the park July 16 pointed out a number of things, including brush clearing that had occurred near some of the historic structures and the construction of a road. Van Wyk said the work in both instances was approved prior to the nonprofit taking over.

She said the concerns highlight tensions between the nonprofit world and that of public safety professionals who historically have had oversight of parks.

“You have a culture clash between an entrepreneurial model and an enforcement model,” she said. “These are all peace officers and they live by the book.”

She said she asked the Rangers Association for written documentation of the group’s observations so that she could respond to any concerns.

Price said the association’s executive committee was planning to review the findings at a meeting scheduled for Sunday. He said the group was then planning on following up with State Parks staff.

He said the association “is not trying to undermine local efforts at fundraising. Of course not.”

Van Wyk expressed confidence that Broadway Under the Stars, the park’s summer concert series, would hold up to any scrutiny. The concerts, held in the winery ruins of the park, have raised more than $150,000 to support park operations, according to Van Wyk.

“We’ve done everything by the book,” she said.

Fans of Funky Fridays might want to consider purchasing tickets in advance. The Meach-ams ended up leaving at the intermission of the July 24 performance in order to connect with two couples who had been planning to join them at the event, but who had been denied entrance.

“You’re trying to enjoy the music, and get into the spirit of this cool community event. But instead of that, you’re left worrying about what became of your friends,” Steve Meacham said.

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek.