Economic Impacts of Parks, Rivers, Trails and Greenways

incurred for maintenance of developed park land. Areas that were "landscaped,"containing turf, shrubs and maintained trees, were considered as were"hardscape" areas including roads, parking lots, trails, building pads, andstructures. The average maintenance cost per acre among the four agenciessurveyed was $4,236 as shown below (American River Parkway, 2000).Table 2.Benchmark Maintenance ComparisonDeveloped Natural BudgetArea Area ($/yr)(acres) (acres)Cost/Dev.(Acre/yr)Facility/AgencyMission Bay Park, San Diego 977 5 $ 3,778,168 $ 3,867City of Sacramento 1,154 1,000 $ 5,485,500 $ 4,753City of Encinitas 54 69 $ 373,550 $ 6,918East Bay Reg. Park District 6,370 84,630 $ 26,600,000 $ 4,176Total 8,555 85,704 $ 36,237,218 $ 4,236Average 2,139 21,426 $ 9,059,305 $ 4,236A similar analysis looked at the California State Parks’ historic costs ofmanaging the 7.5 miles of the American River Parkway that are under itsjurisdiction, include hiking and riding trails, beaches, and day use picnic areas.The number of ranger patrol and lifeguard hours incurred on that part of theparkway during a given year under their historical staffing plan is 9,375. Whencombined with the boat rescue lifeguard position, and divided by 1,800productive hours/position per year, the result is 6.2 full-time positions for 7.5miles of parkway or 0.83 full-time positions per mile of parkway (AmericanRiver Parkway, 2000).Expenditures must be reviewed in detail to determine how much is spent locally since somesupplies may be purchased from outside the region and only the profit from retail sales, forinstance, actually benefits the local retailer. The majority of the purchase price covers thewholesale cost of the product. Also, agency expenditures are often funded by communityresidents in the form of local taxes. This is actually an opportunity cost because residentswould probably have spent that money in the community if it had not been collected in theform of taxes, so there is no generation of extra income by agency expenditures. If,however, resources are injected into an economy from non-local governments, they can beconsidered new money because they would not have come to the community without thepark or trail. Thus, carefully consider what portion of agency expenditures should beincluded in a particular economic impact analysis because a portion could possibly havebeen spent on alternative projects within the area. The East Bay Regional Parks District (EBRPD) in California spends about $80million annually, including $59 million on operations and maintenance andabout $21 million on capital expenditures. A total of 540 permanent employeesand 215 seasonals work for the District. The majority of the funding spent byEBRPD results from local taxes, but funds are also received from outsidesources such as charges for services paid by non-residents, and state and federal10