Palomar Mountain News

 PROPOSAL WOULD LET NON-PROFIT RUN STATE PARK

By DAVID ROSS  A bill making its way through the legislature could open the way for a non-profit organization to run Palomar Mountain State Park, and prevent its closure in the fall of 2012.

AB (Assembly Bill) 42, which passed the Assembly by a vote of 75-1, passed 9-0 in the Senate Natural Resources Committee on June 14, and has been placed in the suspension file by the Senate Appropriations Committee. It will be taken up again in August, when it could be voted to the full Senate floor for discussion.

Los Angeles resident John Summers, a 40-year broadcast and commercial veteran (you have probably heard him in hundreds of TV and radio

commercials) who hopes to retire on Palomar Mountain, has put together a non-profit, Endeavor Communications Inc., that would operate the park, if chosen by the state.

Summers lived on the Mountain when he was a teenager in the 1960s, just prior to high school, and before his family moved back to the East Coast.

The non-profit has a grant writer, Dr. Roger Bailey (no relation to the Baileys of Palomar Mountain), who is preparing a proposal to seek start-up money for the non-profit.

The passage of AB 42 is a serendipitous development in the effort of many local and not-so-local residents to save the state park from closure.

“I had not heard about AB 42, that allows non-profits to become concessionaires at state parks,” said Summers, who had come up with an idea to do that on his own. “When I contacted Sacramento about the idea, lo and behold there was AB 42. It was  being voted on.”

Whether the bill will pass the Senate, and the Senate and Assembly versions be reconciled, and finally signed by Governor Brown, remain unknown.

However Summers has been encouraged by what he has been told in Sacramento.

“They told us that what we are putting together could become a template for all others. This is unfamiliar ground for the state and for non-profits because no state has ever had to do this,” he said.

Summers has assembled a team that includes himself and his wife, Dana; local real estate agent Bonnie Phelps, who got Summers interested in the project; Capt. Nedra Martinez, sector superintendent of the Palomar and Cuyamaca Rancho state parks; Brad Eells, who is the lead person in restoring the Boucher Point fire lookout station in the state park; Joshua Kaskin, who operates a Facebook page called “Save Palomar Mountain State Park”;  and Dr. Bailey, the grant writer.

Martinez, says Summers, “has been a tremendous help from the beginning.”

According to Summers, the park is already generating around $141,000 in fees to keep itself going as far as maintenance. “The overhead is in the salaries,” he says.

“I’ve been told by the state it would cost $38,000-$40,000 for maintenance. We would have a negotiated agreement with the state. We would take it over. It would be almost like a lease agreement. We would be the operating party. That allows us many more options the state isn’t allowed in order to generate funds. After three to four years  we would want to get off grant money and get self-sustaining,” he says.

“I was planning to move back to Palomar and planning to buy a home and retire there. This came about, and well, this might speed things up a bit.”

Summers’s plan calls for him and his wife to live in the ranger’s home and run the operation, and even expand it.

“We are big on education as an interpretative and educational facility. We also want to try to increase campership during the week.

Weekends the camps are packed.  We would like to encourage more and we would have the capability to do that when the state doesn’t. We would open up the park to make it sustainable, educational and interpretative.”

Summers would also like to make the Boucher Hill Lookout, which is located at 5,438 feet, more of an attraction. The lookout, constructed in 1948 by CDF (now Cal Fire), although an earlier tower was in service in the 1920s,  and the current tower remained in service until 1983, is being restored by volunteers and will be going back into service soon. It is the only fire lookout in the state that was located within a state park.

Summers told The Roadrunner, “We want to work hand in hand with the lookout and to grow what’s already there. We also want to work with San Diego County.” The County runs a nature and environmental camp within the state park.

Currently everything is up in the air about the future of the park says Summers. “This is very early on and even Sacramento is stuck in a mode of not knowing what to do and where to go. In thirty days we will get a better idea of what they want to do with the park and who they want to show preference to.

“We have made it very clear that we will move forward in the hope of gaining the concessionaire status,” said Summers, who admitted to a little frustration dealing with the state. “I’m a business man and not used to dealing with government factions.”

But he adds optimistically, “I want to see that park saved for public consumption. I want to rescue it.”

If you also want to rescue Palomar Mountain State Park, contact Summers at endeavorcommunications@hotmail.com or call 661-310-4483.

Regards,

David Ross

Editor

Valley Roadrunner

760-749-1112

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“I can handle big news and little news. And if there’s no news, I’ll go out and bite a dog.”