As of this writing, I have received news that while the motion to deprive the California State Parks of all general fund support has passed, the motion to provide them funding through a vehicle registration surcharge has failed -- leaving the Parks without a cent in the future budget.

If there is a "Plan B", I haven't heard about it, and searches of various websites and newsfeeds have so far proved fruitless.

It looks like the State Government has utterly failed to live up to its promise to preserve our natural and historical legacy, and I now despair of future attempts to get them to re-promise.

I note however, that those parks which will remain open are those which have an alternative revenue stream. Perhaps it is time for the people who support and love those other parks to see if they have the wherewithal to create an alternative revenue stream for their parks.

The State Parks are amazingly bureaucratic, and move at a glacial pace, and most cooperative associations (the non-profit organizations that provide volunteers and funding) are less than dynamic, but perhaps this moment of crisis might be able to galvanize the volunteers into action and get the bureaucracy to get the hell out of the way.

I think it is the time for each local community to look at its parks, take stock of what is needed to keep them open, and negotiate an alliance between local non-profits, community organizations, the local governments and the State government to move some of these parks from the "No funding-Closed" to the "Self Supporting - Open" column.

I don't know if this is even possible in these hard economic times, and it will almost certainly not be possible for some of the more remote parks, but I'll be damned if I can see an alternative.