Calls mount for increased funding for New Jersey’s state parks – New Jersey Monitor

Sylvia Kocses had an important second date in 1967 at Washington Crossing State Park with the person who would grow to be her husband. Once they had youngsters, the park in Mercer County grew to become their go-to, with its playgrounds, nature heart, open-air theater, and 13 miles of trails.

Now 71, Kocses takes her grandchildren and husband for walks there — although not so typically anymore. The character heart and open-air theater have closed. Some park roads and much are so potholed drivers need to zigzag to protect their tires. Timber toppled by a storm final summer time nonetheless litter Continental Lane, a well-liked nature path the place George Washington and his troops started their march to Trenton in 1776 after crossing the Delaware River from Pennsylvania.

“Why have a park that’s so traditionally, fantastically essential and never keep it?” mentioned Kocses, who lives in neighboring Titusville. “Everybody’s all about open house nowadays and the atmosphere, and but we now have these stunning acres of land they usually’re in complete disrepair.”

Washington Crossing State Park, like a lot of New Jersey’s 51 state parks, has grown more and more shabby, particularly lately because the pandemic has pushed extra individuals open air whereas state funding for parks has flatlined.

Shawn LaTourette, who heads the state Division of Environmental Safety, is well-aware of the unhappy state of state parks. He testified about it to state lawmakers at a finances listening to final month, lamenting a $500 million backlog in capital-improvement wants throughout the state park system.

“We now have needed to triage the problems, when it comes to what sorts of capital funding we’re in a position to obtain, and give attention to well being, life, and questions of safety,” LaTourette later informed the New Jersey Monitor.

Amie Rukenstein serves on a volunteer board that helps Washington Crossing State Park. She fumes as she seems throughout the Delaware River, the place Pennsylvania’s scenic Washington Crossing Historic Park lies.

“The Pennsylvania park is fabulous, and our park is dreck,” she mentioned. “It’s a obvious, obvious distinction.”

With the nation’s 250th birthday looming in 2026, the park expects a deluge of historical past buffs keen to go to vital websites.

So Rukenstein and others have launched an advocacy marketing campaign urging park-lovers to foyer their lawmakers to help “heritage tourism.” They need the governor to incorporate $65 million in his $48.9 billion finances proposal to restore and improve American Revolution websites in state parks.

Absent that, they’ve requested officers to prioritize park wants to allow them to fundraise to repair what the state received’t.

However whereas 31 different states have foundations that allow individuals to lift cash to help state parks, New Jersey doesn’t — a shortcoming Rukenstein mentioned exhibits, together with stagnant state funding, New Jersey officers’ misplaced priorities. She pointed to New Jersey’s plan to spend $65 million to purchase 135 acres and create a brand new Essex-Hudson Greenway.

“It’s attractive to make new parks — and nothing towards wanting to try this — however you may’t simply make new stuff and let your previous stuff disintegrate,” Rukenstein mentioned.

A examine in contrasts

With its flowering timber, hilly roads, and a farmhouse relationship again to 1740, Washington Crossing State Park is a picturesque, if unkempt, woodland alongside the Delaware River that drew greater than 270,000 guests final 12 months.

However wander throughout the slender Washington Crossing Bridge to the Pennsylvania facet, and it’s just like the distinction between the Ritz and a fleabag motel.

The five hundred-acre park in Bucks County — known as Washington Crossing Historic Park — has an enthralling historic village the place reenactors do residing historical past demonstrations, a tidy memorial cemetery the place unknown Continental troopers are buried, gardens designed to take a look at they might have within the 18th century, and a slick customer’s heart with a 248-seat auditorium, vibrant museum house, reward store, and a wall of home windows with a postcard-pretty view of the river.

Quickly, it’ll be even nicer: Pennsylvania officers final 12 months launched an $8.7 million challenge to preserve and enhance 17 historic constructions within the park.

Dolores Mita has lived close to the park for 18 years.

“The Jersey facet? I don’t dislike it. I simply don’t get that feeling of historical past that I get on this facet,” Mita mentioned. “This facet, to me, has a historical past that’s extra vibrant. You possibly can image it.”

Apart from, she added, “it’s simply prettier right here.”

In New Jersey, efforts are underway to enhance the park in time for the Semiquincentennial. The state will spend $10 million to construct a brand new customer’s heart overlooking Route 29. The present customer’s heart, constructed about 50 years in the past, will probably be demolished.

However the park’s wants exceed that, some say.

Staffing shortages compound its issues, with simply three upkeep staff on the park, down from 43 staff on the 1976 Bicentennial, in keeping with the Washington Crossing Park Affiliation, a volunteer board.

John Cecil is the state Division of Environmental Safety’s assistant commissioner for state parks, forests, and historic websites.

Cecil mentioned it’s not truthful to check the 2 Washington Crossing state parks, as a result of Pennsylvania’s park is extra “narrowly scoped” on historical past and eight instances smaller than New Jersey’s park, which sprawls throughout 4,130 acres spanning six townships.

Apart from, he mentioned, the state has spent cash — or plans to — in Washington Crossing State Park to take away hazardous timber, enhance a park police workplace, improve water and HVAC methods, and change playgrounds.

However he’s additionally “keenly conscious” a number of different wants exist — and are going unfunded — in each Washington Crossing State Park and all state parks.

“We try aggressively to deal with it whereas recognizing we now have a community of parks throughout the state on 450,000 acres of land that’s being challenged by local weather change and by higher visitation throughout this world pandemic,” Cecil mentioned.

Busier parks, identical want

The state’s busiest parks are likely to get extra help, LaTourette informed the New Jersey Monitor.

“Washington Crossing just isn’t one of many extremely trafficked parks,” he mentioned. “As a perform of that, it could find yourself decrease down within the matrix when it comes to what funding goes the place.”

Liberty State Park is New Jersey’s busiest state park, drawing greater than 5 million guests a 12 months to its 1,200 acres, that are cut up evenly throughout land and water.

Sam Pesin’s father based Liberty State Park, which opened in 1976. Pesin is the longtime president of the all-volunteer Mates of Liberty State Park.

He can tick off loads of unfunded wants at Liberty State Park, like erosion of park jetties and the park’s historic Morris Canal and asbestos that contaminates the prepare shed over tracks that had been a transportation hub for hundreds of years. He’s reluctant to go on, as a result of he is aware of those that wish to privatize parts of the park for revenue would cite such wants — and the cash commercialization would possibly generate for the park — as a motive why the state ought to permit them to develop components of the park.

Pesin has been preventing park privatization for years, most just lately by way of a stalled invoice known as the Liberty State Park Safety Act that may prohibit commercialization there.

He shouldn’t need to wage that struggle, he mentioned, calling on lawmakers to each go the act and enhance park funding.

“Why the hell is there a $500 million backlog? That needs to be addressed as quickly as potential and in a serious manner,” Pesin mentioned. “The elected officers are all the time saying how a lot they love state parks. They need to put their cash the place their praises are. It’s simply overdue for the Legislature to drastically enhance funding for all state parks.”

Basis a solution?

LaTourette mentioned he will get it. He’d like extra funding not just for state parks, however for his division generally.

However he didn’t push for extra when he testified in a Senate finances listening to final month. In an interview earlier this month, he informed the New Jersey Monitor the state has so many competing wants the governor faces “seemingly not possible decisions.”

Marci Mowery heads each the Nationwide Affiliation of State Park Foundations and the Pennsylvania Parks and Forests Basis.

Park funding isn’t a excessive precedence for legislators in lots of states — however it needs to be, Mowery mentioned. “Parks are massive enterprise. They appeal to individuals, they help high quality of life, they’re a approach to recruit enterprise and business to return in. They assist enhance human well being. And in the course of the pandemic, we noticed how essential entry to the outside was for thus many individuals,” she mentioned.

Parks additionally provide environmental advantages, equivalent to flood discount, water high quality enchancment, and air high quality enchancment, and suspending repairs is “not sound monetary administration,” she added.

“After we kick the can down the street, it turns into dearer,” Mowry mentioned. “After we don’t put the roof on a constructing, we could then need to restore the ceiling and change the furnishings and the ground.”

A lot want

New Jersey’s snub of its historic websites has lengthy been a frustration.

A few of the initiatives which have lingered the longest on state parks’ to-do checklist are historic restorations and customer facilities, LaTourette acknowledged. They embrace an academic heart for guests at Princeton Battlefield and restoration work on the Indian King Tavern within the Brendan Byrne State Forest, Monmouth Battlefield State Park, and the grist mill at Batsto Village in Wharton State Forest.

LaTourette agrees foundations might assist.

“Of us ought to have the ability to help the locations they love,” he mentioned.

Two lawmakers purpose to repair that oversight and have launched a invoice to create a nonprofit basis to help New Jersey’s state parks. Sponsors Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer) and Assemblyman William Spearman (D-Camden) launched the identical invoice within the final legislative session, however it didn’t advance.

“We are able to’t handle every thing. We’ve obtained to do the most effective we will with what we now have,” Spearman mentioned. “And that’s one of many causes for creating the muse — to see if we will complement the funding that we do have.”

Kocses can be among the many first leaping into motion to drum up help and complement state funding. Her husband makes use of a wheelchair now, so their visits to Washington Crossing State Park have grown extra rare.

“I can push him on the street right here, however a part of our society right this moment is in search of fairness, particularly for individuals of differing skills. I feel the park ought to tackle even that small of a difficulty,” she mentioned. “However there are different points, questions of safety, historic points, which are simply as essential.”

With out motion, she added, the park will proceed to decay.

“A useful historic web site that’s distinctive to New Jersey will probably be misplaced,” she mentioned.

This story was produced in collaboration with CivicStory and the NJ Sustainability Reporting challenge.