So, the Anti-Reconveyance folks... including the enigmatic Publius from Whatcom Excavator... (who is totally not Greg Brown or Ellen Baker... #winkWink)... continue working the refs (in this case the County Council) about their economic concerns regarding Reconveying public land inside the Lake Whatcom Watershed.
One of the cornerstone arguments against Reconveying the land is that it costs too much and we will lose money on the deal.
Right now, the land is generating revenue from commercial forestry. If we go through with the Reconveyance, the land won't generate any revenue... said the owner of a hammer, to whom all problems bear a remarkable resemblance to a nail.
To those who are in the commercial forestry industry... and those who are acting in sincere solidarity with foresters... it is understandable that the only way they see to generate revenue from a stand of forest is to cut down the trees.
But that's just not accurate.
Forest can generate tourism revenue without any commercial forestry.
Take a look at our National Park System, for example.
Here is what the National Parks Conservation Association published in a 2006 report on National Park Land. LINK
...NPS [the National Park Service] is generating economic benefits well in excess of the cost of maintaining the system. In fact, the public enjoys at least four times the value of each dollar spent by the federal government.
(Note: the emphasis is not added, but is duplicated as it appears in the text of the report itself.)
And by minimum... that report actually documented an ROI (return on investment) ratio of up to 14 to 1 in some of the parks in studied. So, a 4 to 1 ratio is quite conservative.
I cheekily submit that Whatcom County could do at least as efficient a job of administering a park as the federal government (which we all know is the ultimate well-oiled seventeen-jewel lean mean machine of public efficiency...) if we try really, really hard.
But the bottom line is that parks clearly generate revenue... specifically tourism revenue...
(they also increase revenue by increasing the value of nearby property... and therefore increasing property tax revenue... but I leave that be for the time being... I prefer the idea of soaking... uh... I mean attracting tourists (yeah... attracting tourists) more than generating revenue with property taxes...)
Another cornerstone argument for maintaining the status quo rather than Reconvey land in the watershed is that people can do all the stuff they want to do on park land in the commercially forested land...
Want to bird watch? You can do that now...
Want to bike? You can do that now...
Stage a Girl Scout day trip? You can do that now...
Ride your horse? you can do that now...
so there is no reason to Reconvey the land... said the Reconveyance-opposing hammersmiths...
...except as a practical matter you can't do any of those things in DNR land without some trails and other infrastructure that we normally associate with parks (like public bathrooms, as a for instance...) and that infrastructure isn't going to be built on DNR land in the watershed any time in the near... uh... ever...
...but most importantly... what you can't do with commercial forestry land is attract tourists.
No one is spending their vacation time touring the commercial forest lands of North America. They just aren't. Because... well...
...Consider the choice between Olympic National Park and some stretch of commercial forestry land in Lake Whatcom... which one do you think a tourist is going to go for? (Explain your answer in the comments below. I want to read that.)
A low impact park... particularly a 8,700 acre park... on the other hand... could attract tourists to Whatcom County...that is a park that could compete with National Parks for tourists.
It is not an incredible claim that a park generates revenue. It is an incredible claim that a park doesn't generate revenue.
In fact, lets see how much tourism revenue is being generated in Whatcom County lately...
A 2009 report released by the state Department of Commerce had something to say about this... LINK
[Obviously, not all of the tourism revenue generated in Whatcom County is attributable to tourists visiting our parks... but it gives a sense of how much of our county economy does rely on tourism in general.]
The Commerce report sticks to the most verifiable economic indicators of tourist activity... travel expenses.
Page 53...
- Visitors spent 476 million on travel related expenses in Whatcom County in 2008.
- 6,620 people were gainfully employed by that spending.
- It generated about $34 million in tax revenue
Now, I suppose that critics could dismiss this as perhaps just Canadians descending like locusts on the Costco parking lot and the like.
I couldn't care less who is spending money here and why... so long as they are spending it... but what if there was a way to compare the visitor travel dollar to... oh, I don't know... another county.
A county with fewer parks, but a bigger commercial corridor on I-5.
Hey! That sounds like Skagit County!
Lets take a look, shall we?
Page 45...
- Visitors spent 276 million on travel related expenses in Skagit County in 2008.
- 3,080 people were gainfully employed by that spending.
- It generated about $19 million in tax revenue
So... compared to Whatcom County... a lot fewer visitors were travelling to Skagit County and they were leaving a lot less money when the did so. in 2008. (and every year documented in this report from 1991 to 2008, actually.)
Lets compare county park land...
Whatcom County: 7,100 acres of parks (so far)
Skagit County: 2,000 acres of parks
Huh... the county with more acres of parks generated more revenue from visitors to that county... that's quite the coincidence, isn't it?
I want to see the Reconveyance go forward, please.
Enough with the concern trolling already.
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