This week Ron Olson, state parks chief of the 97 state parks in Michigan, responded to a recommendation from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy that it sell off 14 of its parks, including Otsego Lake State Park, as a means to raise funds for the cash-strapped state.
“We have no intention of selling any of our parks,” Olson said Thursday. “We have been looking at ways to preserve what we have and I think it would be poor management to take all of the traditions and history of these parks in the heat of the moment and sell them off.”
Selling off the public estate as a way of balancing budgets makes no sense. Anyone who knows the history of the Michigan state park system also knows what heroic effort it took to build the structure. But sometime between now and 2008 Michigan's public or policymakers must come up with a new and reliable source of funding to maintain and protect the parks.
http://www.gaylordheraldtimes.com/articles/2006/01/16/news/local_news/local_news01.txt
Posted by Dave at January 16, 2006 06:07 PM