Use of county parks for camping continues to increase, with revenue now at $180,000, county conservation director Dan Towers told the county supervisors Monday.
This is the third year revenue has grown, with receipts up 19 percent in 2015, up 8 percent in 2016, and up another 19 percent in 2017. Camping revenue for 2017 was $167,000, with an additional $13,000 in revenue from the two Spring Lake cabins. Prior to 2015, revenue was about $105,000 annually.
Towers doesn’t expect the trend to continue as Spring Lake Park, the largest of the county’s campgrounds, is full most weekends. “It gets to a point where you wonder how many sardines you want to pack in,” he said.
Rentals of the two cabins has been steady the past three years. The cabins are booked every weekend for the coming season. Weekdays in June and July are 80 to 90 percent booked. Weekdays are still available in August, September and October, but Towers isn’t expecting them to fill.
Including rent for the Spring Lake concession stand and some county-owned farmland, rentals for the Milwaukee depot (about 50 per year), and a stipend from Greene County Schools for hosting a cross country meet at Spring Lake, revenues are total revenues are budgeted at $199,500.
The additional camping has a down side that shows on the electricity bill. Utilities is part of an increase in expenditures budgeted for FY19. Towers pegged total expenditures $392,000, an increase of $13,000 – 3.5 percent – over FY18. A 2.5 percent increase in wages, comparable to the increase union employees will receive, accounted for the much of the increase.
Towers plans to add a basketball court at Spring Lake at a cost of $6,000 to $7,000. He also plans to purchase a pre-cast concrete latrine for Spring Lake at a cost of $32,000. The structure will not have running water. It will have a capacity of 2,000 gallons, requiring pumping every four to six weeks, Towers said. It will replace a dilapidated latrine. He also plans to do electrical upgrades at Squirrel Hollow.
The improvements will be funded through the county’s conservation reserve fund. Camping receipts go into the general fund and a portion is allocated back to the conservation reserve fund. There is a fund balance of $30,000 and Towers asked for $30,000 in the coming fiscal year to fund the improvements he named.
He also expects to receive $9,500 from the state’s Resource and Protection (REAP) fund. He carries that money over from year to year, and the FY19 allocation will bring the fund balance to $30,000.
Towers told the supervisors the county has received a $50,000 grant from the state’s fish and habitat fund to repair a riffle at Henderson Park. He plans to submit an application to put in a new boat ramp upstream. The two projects would increase use of the Raccoon River for kayaking, he said. They would be budgeted in FY20.
