More on the County Parks funding crunch: root causes and potential solutions.

A news story in this week’s print edition looks at the ripple effects of the heavy budget cuts coming down on the Monterey County Parks Department. If layoffs move forward as planned, County Parks will lose about half its staff.

Here are some details that didn’t make it into the story.

The County Parks budget cuts can be largely blamed on the low water level at the South County reservoirs, where tourism revenue dried up right along with the lakes.

But the drought, while a driving force in the low water levels, isn’t entirely at fault. Part of the reason Lake San Antonio is now at 4-percent capacity is because of an accident last year at the Lake Nacimiento hydroelectric plant.

During an average dry season, county workers release water out of Lake Nacimiento into the Salinas River at a rate of 400 cubic feet per second, and out of Lake San Antonio at a rate of 250 cfs, according to Robert Johnson, assistant general manager at Monterey County Water Resources Agency. That water flows to the Salinas Valley Water Project diversion facility, also called the rubber dam, which helps supply water to farmers.

But emergency repairs at the Lake Nacimiento hydroplant forced the agency to limit flows out of that reservoir last year, drawing the rest of the necessary releases out of Lake San Antonio, which fills more slowly. (Officials are now pursuing an interlake tunnel to allow water to flow between the two reservoirs.)

The drought meant Lake San Antonio was not replenished over the winter. Without water to supply it, the rubber dam will not be operated this year.

That brings us back to the parks budget, which was decimated by the low lake levels that caused a major dip in revenue. The Lake San Antonio and Lake Nacimiento resorts operate with an enterprise fund—a sub-budget within the larger County Parks budget.

Donovan Corbett, president of the Monterey County Park Ranger Association, would like to see that enterprise fund reabsorbed into the larger parks budget. And he’d like to see the county do more to recruit and keep big events like Lightning in a Bottle festival and the Wildflower Triathlon, which rented recreational space at Lake San Antonio last year for $150,000 each, according to Interim Parks Director Nick Chiulos.

Chiulos says the county could save money by having fewer rangers trained in law enforcement. He’s also pushing for the officials to re-examine the structure of the lake resorts. “Is it a public service or is it a business?” he asks. “And how does that interplay guide board decisions about budget, staffing level and policy?”

Supervisor Simon Salinas notes County Parks has been dealing with unstable leadership: Former County Parks Director Mike Ferry departed in May after less than a year on the job. (In a state-level parallel, California State Parks Director Anthony Jackson also stepped down rather suddenly in May, after just 19 months leading the agency.)

There’s a note of regret in Supervisor Fernando Armenta’s voice as he says the county could have been more proactive in staving off the funding crunch. “I personally as a supervisor feel some responsibility for that,” he says. “We need to put together a parks department that can serve us into the future.”