Cover Page

Contents

Preface
Letter

SECTION I

Orientation
Summary

SECTION II

History
Needs
Geography
Historic Sites
Competitors
Economic Aspects

SECTION III

Federal Lands
State and Interstate
Local

SECTION IV

Division of Responsibility
Local
State
Federal
Circulation

SECTION V

Educational Opportunities

Sources of Funds

The methods by which recreation areas are acquired may be summarized as follows:

General Taxation.—This is a situation in which acquisition costs are made a part of the general budget of the specific taxing unit on which the general tax levy is based.

Special Assessments.—This is a situation in which costs of acquisition are met by a tax levy on a specific district which will derive sufficient benefits from the recreational area created to warrant complete assumption of the coast involved. This method involves establishment of a special form of local improvement district.

Excess Condemnation.—Excess condemnation is the practice of taking by right of eminent domain more property than is actually necessary for the recreation project, and of subsequently selling or leasing the surplus thus acquired. It is based on the belief that the public should benefit from whatever added values are created by public action. When residential property is involved, it is sometimes possible to make excess condemnation meet the whole cost of acquisition and more. As a matter of fact, it is similar in principle to the "Special Assessments" procedure already noted.

Gifts, Transfers, Leases, and Permits.—Gifts have provided the nuclei for some of the outstanding park systems of the country. Donations of land by individuals and associations often include valuable tracts. The motives of such gifts vary. They may be purely philanthropic, or the expression of a desire to establish a monument to someone's memory. In a few cases, gifts have been made with the objective of seeking relief from tax burdens.

Transfer of land between public agencies or between departments within an agency are sometimes effected for the purpose of establishing recreation areas. This method is frequently employed where States own lands suitable for municipal parks.

Leases and permits are sometimes made to allow the use of areas administered by some public agency for special purposes, or to allow the use of some resource from these areas such as water, gravel from river beds, and so on, in order to provide funds.

Of the above listed sources of support for recreational undertakings, the principal one is general taxation. In a few States, notably New York, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut, and California, regular and reasonably adequate funds are made available for acquisition, development, and maintenance of recreation areas. These, however, have been considerably curtailed during the past 5 years. In most States this field of activity is still struggling for adequate recognition.

California and New York have used the proceeds of bond issues for purchase of State parks; highway funds have been used by Oregon for both purchase and operation; Washington's parks are maintained out of a fund built up mainly out of fines for violations of the State's motor vehicle code; Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri have expended fish and game funds for that purpose. County tax moneys are utilized by Massachusetts to develop and operate State park reservations purchased by the State. In a number of States, State funds used for purchase of park areas have been supplemented by private funds, as well as by county and municipal funds.

Provision of funds for publicly owned and operated recreational facilities is, in general, a double problem. One part of the problem is concerned with capital investment, the other with operating costs, and there is a growing tendency to make a sharp differentiation between public responsibility for the one and the other.

It is accepted generally that the responsibility for capital investment—the acquisition of recreational lands and their development for use—lies primarily with the several public agencies involved. The Federal Government has approached the problem of eliminating private ownership of lands inside the national parks by requiring that Federal funds appropriated for the purpose be matched by private contribution.

California's State park purchase program, with $6,000,000 of bond money, was carried through on the same basis and with rather conspicuous success. It has its drawbacks, however; for example, public agencies, chiefly counties and cities, were called upon to furnish a considerable amount of the matching money, so that this contribution of public funds amounted to much more than half. Proponents of the bond act had hoped that private contributions would be made, to a large degree, into a central fund, to be expended at the discretion of the State park commission along with the road funds. Actually, however, most private contributions were made for specific projects, which threw much of the choice of purchase areas into the hands of the contributors, and tended to throw the program out of balance; in other words, it tended to bring into the system certain low-priority areas. It is believed that this situation was largely responsible for the pressure which had to be exerted on county and city governments to provide matching funds, in order that neglected high-priority areas, such as southern California beaches, might he taken into the system.

Indiana, to cite a still more extreme case, largely required counties or private donors to provide her State parks, but made an exception in the case of the Dunes, for the purchase of which there was a special 2 mill State tax levy.

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Last Modified: Fri, Sep. 5, 2003 10:32:22 am PDT
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/recreational_use/chap2-6b.htm