Idaho parks look to corporate sponsors to boost funding

BOISE - Idaho’s state parks system is looking for corporate sponsors for signs, brochures, group picnic shelters and the like, as part of its effort to make the parks system largely pay for itself. “We would hope to be able to acknowledge their donations on signage, printed materials and so forth,” Parks Director David Langhorst lawmakers this morning. “While this kind of activity isn’t prohibited in state code, it isn’t expressly allowed.” So at the suggestion of the Idaho Attorney General’s office, the parks department will be proposing legislation this year to specifically authorize such arrangements. “We’ve got a goal for $20,000 the first year,” Langhorst told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee in the department’s annual budget presentation. Already, he said, Airstream is working with the state to produce a 50th Anniversary Idaho State Parks-model trailer in the coming year; $500 from each sale would go to the department, and the trailer’s interior would be decorated in a theme tied to Idaho’s parks. “We’ve been trying to be creative,” Langhorst said. “There are many companies that really like parks, and they see some value in partnering with us.” He pointed to precedents in public higher education in Idaho, like Nike swooshes on college sports players’ uniforms and Boise State University’s Albertson Stadium and Taco Bell Arena. But Langhorst said the program would not include selling naming rights to Idaho’s 30 state parks. “The park names are pretty historic,” he said. He noted that in Montana, Subway has underwritten TV ads promoting state parks. Idaho’s state Department of Parks and Recreation currently gets just $3.5 million in state funds, about 10 percent of its budget. Other funds come from fees, sales and charges; grants; a small slice of state gas taxes; and registration fees collected on boats, snowmobiles, motorbikes, ATVs, and RV’s. In fiscal year 2008, the department was allocated nearly $18 million in state general funds. Gov. Butch Otter’s budget recommendation for the parks department for next year calls for a 1 percent decrease in state funding, but Langhorst said that’s largely because one-time money for specific projects that was granted this year goes away. The governor is recommending the parks department’s top request: To use state general fund money to permanently replace $1.5 million a year that the department has been borrowing from RV registration fees for the past five years. That helped the state get through the recession without closing any parks or recreation programs, Langhorst said. “The governor and the department greatly appreciate the support of the RV community during the economic downturn,” he said. “It’s now time to restore these revenues to the RV fund for RV-related grants.” RV registrations bring in about $4.5 million a year; the fund shift recommended in the budget would make all those funds once again available for grants for projects around the state that serve RV users. Langhorst reported that the state’s Parks Passport, a $10 pass good for day-use admission to all state parks year-round that Idahoans can purchase when they register their cars, has raised $2.7 million since it was first instituted, and sales are expected to continue to increase. According to the department’s projections, he said, “By July of this year, 9.5 percent of all registered vehicles in Idaho will be participating in the passport program.” The governor’s budget also calls for funding for several park projects next year, including a new group camping area at Farragut State Park and a new day-use parking lot at Round Lake State Park.