Patrick to seek $100.6m to manage state parks, forests, beaches
Budget would boost spending 8.3 percent over current year
Even as officials cut and scrimp to close a billion-dollar budget shortfall, Governor Deval Patrick will seek an 8.3 percent funding boost for the long-neglected state Department of Conservation and Recreation to increase staff and revitalize the 450,000 acres of state parks, forests, and beaches.
Senior administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said yesterday Patrick will seek a $100.6 million overall budget for the agency. After subtracting funds that pass through the agency for projects such as local environmental cleanups, that would represent an 8.3 percent increase in funding for core department operations and a 19.6 percent increase since Patrick took office.
Besides a previously announced new team of 60 maintenance workers and supervisors set to go to work this summer to improve ocean and fresh-water beaches, the new funding would increase the number of rangers in state parks by nearly 50 percent, from 21 to 31.
Those figures don't count rangers assigned exclusively to the State House and the Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs.
The increased funds Patrick seeks would also restore staff at visitors centers in several urban heritage parks around the state and pay for two new full-time, year-round crews of arborists focused on caring for the 10,000 trees that line parkways and parks in metropolitan Boston.
Overall, if approved by the House and Senate, Patrick's plan would increase staff at the department by 100 people, to just under 1,200, compared to the day he took office in January 2007.
Frank Gorke - director of Environment Massachusetts, a group that has pushed to improve state parks - said advocates were thrilled by Patrick's move.
"Our parks sorely need the help, as anyone who visits these places can tell you," Gorke said. "This kind of reinvestment is exactly what we need to get back on track to a world-class park system. This governor is making clear he's serious about restoring our parks."
Patrick vowed on the campaign trail to make revitalizing the state's parks, forests, and beaches a priority for his administration. In 2003, Governor Mitt Romney persuaded the Legislature to combine the Metropolitan District Commission and the Department of Environmental Management into a new Department of Conservation and Recreation.
Romney promised the merger would save millions of dollars in overhead costs that could fund "a world-class park system" for the state.
But as he moved to close a large budget gap in 2004, Romney slashed department spending, and legislators - annoyed by what they called an unresponsive, ineffectual Romney team at the agency - refused to restore funds.
By the middle of this decade, studies showed Massachusetts ranked 48th among the 50 states in spending per capita on parks. 