re: Chicot State Park could face cuts, closures because of funding

i'm from Evangeline parish and never heard of anyone mention a location called PINE POINT. I grew up in Vidrine.

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Really nice park and one of the only state parks in the state worth visiting. The state already doesn't have many state parks as it is. I guess they have to cut funding for recreation to make room for all dem gub'ment handouts...

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If the legislature would roll back a portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax expenditures/subsidies that the state doles out each year to businesses, maybe the funding for State Parks (which has been cut drastically already, mainly during the Jindal years) wouldn't have to be cut again. For example, that ridiculous subsidy the state pays each year in the business inventory tax credit to companies needs to go. The parishes benefit, and the state foots the bill. It generally costs the state between $200 to $300 million annually. Hell, just a year or two ago, corporations in Louisiana paid net zero in state income taxes due to all the tax credits/expenditures the legislators have handed out to businesses over the years, that is a fact.

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Yeah they went up on campsite prices too.

They are more expensive than some of the nicest National Parks. Now I go camping elsewhere.

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Many have started coming to TX parks for camping for a change of pace.

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I always heard Chicot kept the other parks running. It's the state's flagship park, but also the largest.

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While Chicot is indeed the biggest, it's not the most profitable. The only site in the La. State Parks system that makes a profit is Fontainebleau, every other site runs at a deficit (22 state parks, 15 state historic sites with about 1/3 of the historic sites running by appointment-only).

Hodges Gardens had great potential to be the centerpiece but the amount of money it would have taken to bring it up as well as the lack of any real desire to do so (it was foisted on state parks by legislators, much like Black Bear Golf Course, if memory serves).

State Parks has been having troubles for over a decade now due to spending cuts, maintenance funds being raped for the sake of keeping Jindal from saying he had to raise taxes (looking at you, Angelle Davis) and poor leadership from the very top of the State Parks organization (sometimes including the Lt Gov's office, sometimes not). They are at a point now where there are park managers managing more than one park and some parks having a total of 2 full-time employees (parks are open 7 days a week, so during that time at least one has to man the entrance station).

The best thing the Lt Governor could do right now is to have legislators out to the parks without fixing them up ahead of time and let them see how bad the conditions are (recently he did this at Chicot but had state parks running full-bore for the month preceeding the visit to make things pretty).

If not then they'll need to start closing parks and historic sites with the lowest visitation or else move the whole agency under Wildlife & Fisheries.

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State Parks has been having troubles for over a decade now due to spending cuts, maintenance funds being raped for the sake of keeping Jindal from saying he had to raise taxes (looking at you, Angelle Davis)

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This^^^^^^

It's also time that the state takes a serious look at rolling back the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax credits/expenditures/subsidies it doles out to corporations each year. The business inventory tax credit, which benefits the parishes but it's the state that foots the bill, costs the state at least $200 million a year. Cutting the part of the Stelly Tax structure that asked the more affluent in the state to pay their fair share of income taxes also blew a big hole in the budget that the state has been struggling to deal with ever since.

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Yeah they went up on campsite prices too. They are more expensive than some of the nicest National Parks.

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That's what happens when people elect morons like Bobbie Jindal who drastically cut funding for state parks so he doesn't have to ask the affluent and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.

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If only Fairview-Riverside State Park had the room to add a bunch of cabins/lodges, I believe it too would be profitable. It's heavily visited as well.

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Fairview gets a lot of overflow from Fontainebleau during the busy season.

The room is there for cabins/lodges on the Tchefuncte along that deep bow in the river, but they would have to be built up high like the ones on the lake at Fontainebleau and any roads out there would need to be raised to some extent. They could also take down the Otis House to make room for a lodge (no idea how much visitation it gets, but it can't be much).

However they won’t close the state operated golf course. ??