Meanwhile, modern biological reality is that an UNmaintained “natural area” will turn into an impassible thicket, dominated by a few aggressive invasive species (buckthorn, garlic mustard, etc.), with amazingly few natives. Don’t expect people who care about nature to visit much – there’s little to see, and trails don’t maintain themselves.

I’ve volunteered a bit for work days (maintenance) in local natural areas, and seen both the good (a wide variety of native wildflowers, admired by frequent visitors on nice trails) and the bad (invasive shrubs so thick that the soil under them was barren gray dust, like the face of the moon – and you’d want a saw, gloves, tough clothing, and eye protection to force your way in).

So – when folks voted for the millage, what did they really want? To feel a bit like English lords, able to brag about the beautiful gardens at their country estates? Or for there to actually BE beautiful gardens (nice natural areas) – which (sad to say) means that there must be a lot of hard-working gardeners?

(I don’t recall much about the ballot measure, to know if this change is within the letter of the law, or consistent with how the County represented things at the time. But I’d bet the change is coming from people who care about our natural areas, not a bunch of politicians. The latter like “doing the deal”, not hiring seasonal maintenance workers – who’ll give the politicians about zero status, thank-you votes, or campaign donations in return.)

I feel that this is a violation of the public trust and the ultimate “bait and switch”. It seems clear that if this ordinance change passes, I will never again vote for ANY County millage because I simply won’t be able to trust that they will do what they promise to do.

Another disturbing aspect of this article is that the Parks budget shows a deficit of over $11 million in 2011 and projects another huge deficit of over $14 million for 2012. Is anyone minding the store? Why is there such apparent mismanagement? They should quit building costly facilities which are very expensive to staff and maintain! Next thing you know, they’ll want another millage passed to cover their mistakes. Fool me once…