California State Parks closures questioned

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- California State Parks officials were grilled about the planned closure of 70-state parks.

Two assembly committees looked at how the department chose the parks slated to shut down under the state's budget plan.

The closures were supposed to be based on 11-criteria outlined by legislation, including statewide significance, visitation rates, and the net savings of a park closure. But the parks department admitted, the dozens of experts who finalized the list, didn't produce a detailed scoring system on how they came to their conclusions.

Assem. Jared Huffman (D) San Rafael said, "In the absence of any analysis that you can show us what we're literally being told is despite this very prescriptive set of sole factors that have to be included in a process people gathered in a room and rolled out a list and that's all we get to know."

The state is working with the federal parks foundation and a number of non-profit groups in hopes of keeping many of the parks on the closure list - open. No parks in the Central Valley are on that list.

Visit the California State Parks website for more information on the proposed closure and a list of parks on that list.

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