Pasco County Parks considering admission charges too

[M&M Melted]

An interesting, non-emotional article from the St. Pete Times about how Pasco County is considering jumping on the bandwagon by charging admission fees to Pasco County parks...

Pasco County considers charging admission to parks - http://www.tampabay.com/news/localgover ... ks/1105231

[isonzo karst]

some of the comments are funny - folks that are amazed that having voted to artificially hold down property assessments, and increase the homeowner exemption, that funds need to be raised from other sources.

We've been in this house a long time, with the various tax breaks that the citizens of Florida have voted for themselves, the assessment is ridiculously low, and can never rise to catch up to reality As little as we pay to the county, I have no clue how it functions.

User fees for parks seem the right way to go to me, especially when they're in the $2 range. And especially if annual passes are available for those who are heavy users.

We kayaked at Sargeants park yesterday, a Hillsborough County park. Paid $5 for using the ramp.( Postpile tells me that we should have paid the $2 day use fee instead, as we weren't using the ramp for power boats, but that's not how I understood it. He's probably right. In any case the day use fee would have been $4 for both of us... )
If I were using those Hillsborough County parks more, the $50 yearly pass would be worthwhile.

[Zogstarlene]

I bought the $50 Hillsborough county pass. It was easy enough to pony up the money in the envelopes but I didn't always have the singles...so the annual pass is just easier.

I probably go to Hillsborough county parks 50 times a year. I certainly don't go to Pasco county parks that often (unless the Green Swamp is one then ...er I do) but I'd probably buy an annual pass for Pasco for the same convenience factor. I liked saying on my annual pass permit paperwork that Geocaching was my primary reason for getting the pass - let's them know we are using the parks, perhaps will get the new cache permit process speeding up a bit.

[M&M Melted]

I was thinking about all this yesterday when I paid $2 to get into Lettuce Lake Park. Such a beautiful place and definitely worth it to be able to continue to enjoy a park like this!