There's nothing passive about passive parks

BEAUFORT -- Beaufort County's land preservation efforts have ramped up in recent months, opening up limited public access to thousands of acres as passive parks.

Passive, unfortunately, doesn't mean maintenance-free -- or free to maintain.

Buying land for parks takes property off of tax rolls while piling more maintenance responsibilities onto county workers.

"We saw this train wreck coming down the road," said Slade Gleaton, South Carolina director of the Trust for Public Land, at a Jan. 17 preservation meeting. The trust is a nonprofit organization that the county hires to handle preservation deals.

The preservation program is paid for through bonds earmarked for buying land and development rights. Since the program was created in 1997, voters authorized borrowing $40 million in 2000 and another $50 million in 2006. The bonds are repaid over time with a small property tax.

The bond money cannot be used for maintenance or park development, so the responsibility falls to Eddie Bellamy, county director of public works.

The workers cutting the grass at ball fields are the same ones tasked with cleaning up the passive parks, Bellamy said. Nothing has been added to his budget to maintain the passive parks.

The county contracted landscapers to maintain some preservation sites, but it was too costly, said County Council Vice Chairman Skeet Von Harten.

"Something has to be done. We keep acquiring more land without putting in more dollars. If we let all this land become an eyesore, then the whole program tanks," he said at the January

meeting.

There is limited public access to the preserves, "But not to the degree we'd like," said Glenn Stanford, a trust project manager that works in Beaufort County. "You've got to open them up as well."

For example, the county bought the historic Fort Fremont on St. Helena Island from private owners in 2004 for $5.4 million. Decades of overgrowth and neglect left it looking like the setting for an Indiana Jones adventure instead of a family outing.

The overgrowth and refuse at the fort has been cleared, but "we can't man the fort so people can actually look at it," Bellamy said.

Stanford said adding trails, wildlife viewing areas and interpretive signs are desirable developments for passive parks that would improve access.

One source of revenue for that type of development comes from the land preservation deals themselves. The trust sometimes negotiates with land sellers for cash gifts for the preservation program. Unlike the bond money, gift money isn't legally bound to pay for

preservation.

Another part of the eventual solution, trust officials said, is creating a corps of volunteers to help with maintenance and fundraisers. Trust officials have been referring to the concept as "Friends of the Parks."

"It's been something we've been chewing on and passing back and forth in-house for some time," Stanford said, emphasizing that the idea is purely conceptual.

"It hasn't really gone beyond, 'Do you like the idea?' " said Steve Riley, chairman of the County Council's Rural and Critical Lands Preservation Board.

Gleaton said the volunteer corps couldn't shoulder the entire maintenance load for the county's passive parks and that some new revenue stream must be identified. He suggested charging modest user fees, as does the Charleston County Park & Recreation Commission.

The commission's executive director, Tom O'Rourke, said the fees it collects at its marinas, fishing piers, beaches, campgrounds and water parks pay for new parks.

Less than 45 percent of the commission's operating budget comes from taxes, according to the commission's Web site.