BAD DECISIONS made in the past have a way of piling up compound interest when the time comes to pay for them and the governor’s ordered budget cuts of 6, 8 or 10 percent are at least helping to bring some of that to light.
For example, in order to save up to a required $2 million, the 18-member Georgia Board of Natural Resources has reportedly decide to either close or reduce hours at seven historic sites and six state parks. That’s 13 out of the existing 63.
The exact locations have not been determined but the scuttlebutt includes shuttering the Chief Vann House in Spring Place and possibly New Echota state park in Gordon County.
Well, that would pretty much complete the forced removal of all Cherokee presence from Georgia, a process the state government started back in the 1830s, wouldn’t it? In fact, about all that would be left to pay homage to that heritage would then be the John Ross House at Rossville and Chieftains Museum in Rome, both operated by private, nonprofit entities and not the state.
THIS POTENTIAL affront to a history that Northwest Georgia, in particular, holds dear — and this newspaper through two issues of its own annual Past Times magazine devoted to the Cherokees perhaps especially so — would seem ample cause to provide Georgia’s bureaucratic leadership a practical lesson in how to read a profit/loss ledger.
First of all, one suspects many, many Georgians consider the operation and maintenance of the state parks system to be one of the few tangible benefits of all the money they ship off to Atlanta yearly. These are places that ordinary folks can go to enjoy nature, learn about their past and so forth.
Just guessing, but likely the parks and their availability are one of the few things citizens really are pleased to get from their government.
Most are unaware that operating the parks also is about the smallest item in the state’s budget of now $21 billion. After deducting for the revenues the parks generate in fees and such, the entire shebang costs $8.9 million annually in tax support. Hence, using the way any business would look at it, a budget cut of $2 million amounts to more than 20 percent, not 6 percent.
LET’S TAKE IT a step further. Most visitors to state parks in particular are Georgians. However, in recent years in order to supposedly attract more out-of-state tourists, business meetings and such the state has built fancy-dancy lodges at a number of them — some leased out to private-sector operators and making money, others operated by the state.
A breakdown of the profit/loss statements for the state-run ones from last year shows only one “made money” — Unicoi State Park and Lodge near Helen. Its profit for the year? $7,026.
All the rest lose huge sums, led by Amicalola Falls State Park and Lodge with a negative $697,705. Throw in the losses from the other five such lodges and the state’s taxpayers are actually underwriting them to the tune of roughly $3 million a year — way more than the maximum $2 million budget cut being sought.
One assumes this logical approach to the current problem can’t be pursued because of existing contracts or whatever, but it does again raise the question: What’s the state doing in the hotel business anyway?
When the private sector faces such an exercise it routinely jettisons or sells off the “losers” in its portfolio. Apparently, in Georgia’s public sector, this becomes a reason to discard history and access to the great outdoors to the shareholders in this enterprise, also known as citizens.
AT A COST of $8.9 million in tax dollars a year, this government department somehow manages to operate some 63 facilities that are intended primarily for the enjoyment of the taxpayers. One doubts many other government divisions do something that citizens so enjoy for so little money.
Indeed, in the context of an overall $21 billion state budget, the actual cost of parks and historic sites apparently amounts 0.4238095238095238 percent of Georgia’s entire outlays. Boy, the schools only thought they were being shortchanged!
By the way, the state park system, just like public education, has seen its budget share cut every year since 2002 — and that was during the “good times”!
The state’s going to do what it has already determined it is going to do, of course. If history and places to enjoy the outdoors both suffer as a result, then Georgians will have no say in the matter, even with a major general election coming up shortly. Nothing like this is on the ballot and, for the most part, those who decided upon this course aren’t either.
BUDGET CUTS and overall frugality are necessary in current times; no argument with that. The choices made by bureaucrats, and the way they seem to look at such matters, unlike the decision makers in private enterprise, simply betray that they have no actual stake in the matter.
Only God can make a tree. Only government can say you can’t go to the park to look at it.
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