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Sonoma County, a diverse county of over one million acres is famed for its agriculture industry and recreation boasting a booming economy and a unique lifestyle for its citizens described by the famed Luther Burbank as the chosen spot of all the earth. Sonoma County is the place

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to live, work and play as we move into the 21st century. Led by the forward looking philosophy of its governing bodies. Sonoma County's 340,000 residents are a harmonious, successful blend of ethnic and economic backgrounds. We invite you to take a closer look at Sonoma County in

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the nineties with your host Rich McGlinchey. Hello, welcome to another edition of Sonoma County in the nineties on this program, we're gonna be talking about a very good county department, very excellent record. We're also gonna be talking about the department that represents something you and I

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love and that is the Sonoma County Regional Parks and our guests are Jim Angelo, he's the director of regional parks and steve Phelps is the operation manager and we were just talking about the fact that they have visitors before. Jim only about a year ago, but

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I think steve was about eight years ago. Was it nice to have you back Jim, It's always nice to visit with you. Um as I said a moment ago, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about a department that certainly operates the most popular facility in Sonoma County

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are regional parks. We have a marvelous regional parks system. Thanks to these gentlemen that people work with them and if you haven't taken advantage of them. I'm sure after you hear what we have to say today you will want to um, jim, let's start off with

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you, you're the director. We've got to pay a little homage here to the boss parks. It used to be called Once Upon a Time parks and recreation I believe it was and it became Sonoma County regional parks. What is Sonoma County Regional Parks? Well, it's a

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combination of parks really. There's open space parks that have more rural type facilities and we have just in the last eight years started to develop more community type facilities. So regional parks is basically the gamut of everything. We have open space parks, we have highly developed

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neighborhood and community parks. So we went from basically operating open space parks now, athletic fields and highly developed picnic areas and landscaped areas and whatnot. So regional parks has changed in the eight years. I've been here just tremendously from open space now to more organized recreation

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facilities. We've got a splendid plethora I guess you'd say of parts and all different kinds and I've had the pleasure of going to every one of them sometime or other, you know, and taking pictures sometimes. And I really think we probably the envy of an awful

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lot of other counties our size, certainly I think park system, we have. How many facilities does regional parks operate now? Jim, we have 35 parks, combination, open space, larger parks and community parks. So on so forth. We have eight veterans Memorial building, the community center And

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we also operates but Point Marina. So we have just spread throughout the entire county facilities. Now that's correct. For the last time I asked that question, it was about 28 or something. Yeah. Just this year alone we opened up about five or six facilities. Right. So

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it's just growing. That's wonderful. I mean that's wonderful. And the and the public I know because I hear this frequently from a really appreciate our park system. I'm now a senior C so I get to go on your golden, we call the Golden Fast Fast Fast.

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All right. Yeah. But I hear people all the time commenting on how well the parks are run, how clean they are things that people are doing. And I know that's a very difficult problem to to keep them up the way you people do. What type facilities

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do you operate? Break that down again? Well, we have facilities for camping, right, beach facilities and pay access trails to the beach. We have sports facilities, picnic areas, play lots for Children basically. It just goes the entire gamut. We have equestrian trails. We have, you name

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it, we've got it. Beach facilities at Spring Lake. We have not only the lake, but we also have the aquatics area there. So we have just a multitude of recreational outlets for the people in the county and the many visitors who come to this county to

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create a beautiful facility. People I know that's kind of a little jewel in your park system, but certainly in the metropolitan area. Yeah, I think it's probably our heaviest use park also. Um, And you said 35 and all scattered all over the county. I guess Hillsboro

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beach was probably one of the first things we ever had. And Dorian are both very, very popular parts. We went over to park this recently. My grace is the number of people walking on the beach was surprising and of course this was on Friday. So the

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campers were starting to arrive. It's really wonderful system. How are park locations or sites for the new parks such as the last half a dozen you've opened this last year. How are those selected? Well, basically we, we haven't acquired a lot of parks through paying for

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them. The parks, a lot of them are dedicated to the county because of a developer going into an area and developing a housing units will dedicate land to us to turn into a park. So um, park, usually our purchase, but recently we haven't had money to

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purchase land for parks were doing more acquiring of parklands through the dedication of lands that sub dividers and developers are giving to the county for parks purposes. So that's basically how it's been going the last eight years or so, selecting is one thing being a land,

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all that sort of thing. How is the park planned? Usually when we have a park site identified and it's now county property. What we'll do is it will meet with the community and we'll get community input. They'll tell us what they'd like to see, what they

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would not like to see in the park. Um Based on the information we have at that community meeting, we'll come back, we'll review the information, will design something that basically fits the mold of what the people wanted some of the things and the concerns that we

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have, we constantly have to build into any park facility that we design and eventually operate the health and safety of the public using that facility. So once we get the input from the community from that first public meeting, we'll come back, we'll analyze the information put

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together a plan. Have yet another community meeting. Talk about the, the draft plan that we have, um, make modifications. Get more feedback from the community based on that meeting. Usually we're ready to go with a finished product by that time and we'll go to the board

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of supervisors and we'll ask them to formally adopt a master plan for a park. If we had to have more public meetings because of more concerns about the park, we would continue to have public meetings until we resolved all the issues and then finally get to

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the board of supervisors final approval. Who let's take that very, just just for a moment. Very initial step who first starts the thought of a park, is there some land available or does the supervisor or somebody in the district say, hey, we, you know, we really

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need a facility and does that trigger you're looking or what? Actually, it's a combination of everything you mentioned, it's the community needs board of supervisor representing that area. It could be an organization that would like to, uh, CIA facility constructed. We have a number of facilities

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have been constructed by volunteer groups. We may have land but no money to develop. We'll talk to the lions of Sir Optimist little League groups or something like that and they'll come in and voluntarily pay for the development of a portion of the park and it'll

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be constructed that way? Um, as far as new park sites go, we're always looking at surplus state and government lands wherever they might be. We're looking and talking to developers all the time. They may have an idea that they want to develop a housing track somewhere

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and they want to talk about the land that they give us based on the needs of the area and whatnot. We'll start looking at the type of area that we want and what will best meet the needs of the residents in that area. You mentioned that

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the driver, six new parks have opened this last year recently. Are there any new facilities plan at this time? We're working on primarily existing park sites trying to develop them out. We have a lot of land and parks that have not been developed. So I think

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that the emphasis this upcoming years to develop lands within existing county parks that have not been developed and its meeting athletic needs in Soma Valley, the Healdsburg Windsor area and also in in the, in the Roseland area as we grow in population, we grow in youngsters

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and there's getting to be more and more of a need for for athletic facilities, aren't there? Of some sort? Yeah, it seems like that's probably the biggest push right now to keep up with the need of the athletics, especially for youngsters coming up, little League soccer

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and those type of facilities are really sorely needed with the expanding population of the county, there's more of a demand for that type of facility. I know we've got a lot of wonderful parks and and I know a lot of people attend or visit them regularly,

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literally hundreds of thousands over the years. What does it cost to operate apart? It ain't for nothing. Well, they're not cheap. Our total operating budget for parts is about $3.8 million. However, user fees, entry fees, campground fees and reservation fees that we collect, we collect roughly

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about $2 million dollars a year fees. Um and that's reservations of vets memorial buildings included. Um, so the actual cost of the parks is about, we're about 50% self supporting in County County Parks. That's good though. You're talking about 2,000,000 to 3.83.8 so half at least.

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So we're talking ladies and gentlemen about the fees that we pay and this is why I think we should be glad to pay these fees. Many people are reluctant to take money out of the pocket period. But the point is, if you want to enjoy these

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wonderful aesthetic places to visit or to go or to use, It costs a little something in those fees allow us to keep developing the system. Right, that's correct. Of the $2 million $1.2 million. And we have the cost of Spring Lake. The operation maintenance of Spring

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Lake is about an $800,000 number. Um we kind of had a question here, what does it cost to use our parks and about the fees. But I think we kind of touched on that. You want to add something to that for day use in our park

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system. It costs from $1 to $3 depending on the facility We have overnight camping facilities and the price tag for for using those facilities for in county residents. An overnight camping fee is $10 for out of county residents at its $12. And then at Spring. Lake

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Park camping stays constant at $11 per night for campsites. This just means that local residents get a break Even in the campsite. That's correct. That should be. We have fees for special activities and for the veterans memorial buildings as well. I know I happen to have

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a little gold past. So I know the answer to this thing, but to a degree. But do senior citizens qualify for reduced rates or free admission for senior citizens, 60 years of age and older? We we give free of charge, the Golden Years passport and all

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all you have to do to get one of those passports is come into one of our park offices or our headquarters office and provide proof of age and proof of residency. And we'll give you a free Golden Years pass. Well I want to also come in,

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you jim and your staff in these places. The people that handle the Golden Age applications, they really are a fine group of people and I like to come in them publicly because they do such a nice job in handling the older people when they come in

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and ask for this and make it a real, real pleasant experience to come in and get the golden years passed. So you pass that on to your folks down there. How about yearly passes that you might use to? Well you could purchase, let's say to use

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the parts. Do you have those, we just this next year starting in July we just revised our yearly pass system and for $30 you can get a pass that It gives you free day use in our parks and it runs for 12 months and it's renewable

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every every 12 months. How much does that cost? That's $30 for a year passed and that gives you 12 months for a 12 month period of time and it gives you a free day use privileges. That's a heck of a bargain. Whatever I'm dealing with the

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county facilities or the county recreational agencies such as the park and recreation or the Sonoma County Fairgrounds for instance. I point out that to people in general, you know, I think we can go to the Sonoma County fair. I believe it is for a $4 admission

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nowadays. And and it's really quite amazing when you figure that the cost of most amusement parks or something like that, you go out there. But if you really want to have a wonderful day, go to one of our park sites and the fee will be so

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infanticidal as opposed to the joy you'll have out of it. I can't recommend your places too strongly. I really really my wife and I visit them every month for sure and often. Um, let's see. Oh family use. Family use. Yeah. Do you have any areas that

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you reserve safer family or for group use? I mean we'll stay for picnics. Right. We have a, we have a number of areas in our system at regular ranch. We have a very nice large group picnic area. And at Maxwell out in Sonoma Valley we have

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another facility. Beautiful spots both of them. Right. And the keys are one of our older park facilities Keizer park up in Windsor there's a very nice group picnic area. Speaking of two regular park over on regular road and Maxwell right on the road going into sin

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over there, right by albarino. Really those are just marvelous acquisitions. Those are recent acquisitions and they, they have really been popular, haven't they? Absolutely. I think that Maxwell just because of the location that so many people driving by is probably going to turn out to be

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one of our most popular and heavily used people all around that place. All right. Listen, we're gonna pause right here for a couple of messages and then we're gonna come back and we'll talk more in the gym. Angelo steve Phelps and find out more about our

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simply marvelous Sonoma County Parks system regional Park system if you will the animals in the forest. If they could talk, what do they say? They might say be careful with fire in the forest just like Smokey says only you can prevent forest fires. Just a fraction

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of what we spend dining out. Could help pick up the tab for a good cause A small part of what we spend on sports could help keep our community in shape or some of our time on the phone. Could help answer society's problems, won't you get

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involved? By giving 5% of your income and volunteering five hours per week. You can really help your community this year, make it your goal to give five what you get back is immeasurable. Welcome back to this edition of Sonoma county in the nineties and we're talking

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about the Sonoma County Regional Parks department. We have, we have just learned 35 park and recreation sites of one sort of another in Sonoma County. And I tell you truthfully that makes us the envy of a lot of other counties in the state of California. And

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two of the gentlemen are responsible for, this is our director of the regional parks system and Jim Angelo and his operations manager steve Phelps Stephen coming back to you for a moment. Um what type of activities are planned for this time of year at our regional

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parks Rich. This is one of our busiest times of the year. On august 10th and 11th we have the gravity apple Fair also starting soon will be cross country track meets that are sponsored by the local high schools state college in the, in the junior college

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santa rosa Junior college and throughout the summer we have day camps sponsored by Boy Scouts, girl scouts, campfire boys and girls. They're very popular, especially at Spring Lake Park. This tremendous number of activities I know scheduled. You know, I thought of something that maybe the audience

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might be interested in knowing. Uh, Jim Angelo has been with our parks department for several years now. Jim you were director in southern California before you come out county actually in the eastern Sierras, right. For many years. And then we were lucky enough to lure e

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up here. Right. And Steve Steve spent years with federal government's park system. Right, right. Rich. I was up at warm springs data for the last 12 years. Yeah. Okay. James, we have a question for you. Regional parks have a volunteer program. Yes, we do. We have

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an outstanding volunteer program started in 1984 with one person opening and closing a gate for us. And we've grown since that time this past year. We were number two in the county with well over 18,000 hours of donated volunteer help. And it ranges from from trail

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walkers to Dawson's to, to campground hosts and people just doing anything and everything for the department. Um, and I take a great deal of pride in the fact that we have so many people wanting to assist us coming to our parks and wanting to work for

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us and whatnot. It's very, very gratifying to see the public get behind the park system that way. They're an invaluable asset. Absolutely volunteers are just exactly that They volunteer their time to serve with jim and steve and their group And 18,000 hours, 10,000 hours this past

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year. We're shooting for 20,000 this year. Well maybe we've tapped a little vein here. How does somebody become a volunteer for regional park? All they have to do is call our main office and we'll put them in contact with our volunteer coordinator. And it's basically, we

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have a brochure to give them. It's basically an introduction as to what the volunteer program is, what's expected of them. Some of the benefits they get by working for us. And they can easily do that by contacting our main office and asking for the information? Call

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the office the office number 5 to 7 to 0412045 to 7 to 041. That's correct. And then the actual address of the department is 24 3 24 oh three. Professional Drive Drive suite 100. Right? You want. So you can go to 24 or three Professional Drive

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or you can call 5272041241. And you might find that it's fascinating to be a park volunteer because you know when you're at great places and you can have a wonderful time. And I recommend an extraordinary, uh, what does a campground host do? Campground host is a

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person who helps us meet. It is a great job. It's a great job. And usually we hire couples as part of our volunteer program. We usually hire couples because we work on a 24 hour day basis. And these folks help us out in our campgrounds primarily

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and they meet and greet the public. They collect fees for firewood, they registered campers and they help with the campground security campground hosts. That sounds right now. What about a docent? What does that do for you? Dawson is also a volunteer position and they help us

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out in the area of interpretation. They take care of interpretive walks and they put on a slide shows to the public for us and they talk about exactly what we do in regional parks are camping facilities are day use facilities and they're a great asset to

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our department. Do you? People put those folks through a training program of any kind of like a dose that that's going to say. Let's direct people around one of the parks in Guatemala or something of that nature. Would they, first of all get a lot of

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information from you about the thing. Yes. They would train them at our public information center with our volunteer coordinator and we train them in all aspects of what's happening in regional parks and the content takes over and does whatever you want them to do. And what

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do they do? They lead tours lead interpretive interpretive, what's the name of your pocket? That's it. That's, that's a lovely place. And I know you have a little, what you call the information center there and that, that's one of our success stories with volunteers. That, that

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visitor center is open seven days a week and it's manned strictly by volunteers and it's a, it's a great place. There's a museum with local artifacts there and we have information about the ecology and the ocean environment and so on and so forth. But it's operated

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primarily by volunteers and it's one of our, one of our jewels in the, in the department. Question for you where and what is Spud Point marina? Well, Spud Point marina is a commercial fishing port and it's in bodega bay, You know this, but it's a commercial

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fishing port that was constructed by the county back in 1984. And it's just, it's a large facility. It's, it's unique. If Sonoma County is unique, it's unique because of spud Point and we sell fuel and ice. It's open 24 hours a day and it's primarily commercial

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fishing ports. Yeah, that's a fantastic place. That's big too, isn't it? How many? There's about 247 births, but we've had as many as 300 boats in there really. We just, we make room when there's busy fishing going on and that's a beautiful facility. They can. Uh,

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can't they stock up on gasoline and we have a 45 ton ice machine. We sell fuel at the Marina? It's open 24 hours a day and we, we cater to the voting public there. That's terrific. Okay, well, Jimmy, I'll stay with you for a minute. What

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we have, I think eight Veterans Memorial Auditorium. Well, they're located throughout the county major communities. The basketball santa rosa, petaluma and Sonoma being the main buildings. We have smaller buildings in custody, Cloverdale and a community center in Occidental. Thank you. Um, basically the buildings are available

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for private groups to come in and uh, and reserve rooms for weddings, receptions, commercial events and whatnot. We have about over 6000 events held annually at our veterans memorial buildings. And it's open to a person to come in contact the same office. Telephative number and information

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can be acquired about reserving those facilities. Yeah, I'll repeat that just in case people didn't get any of the information that you hear from Jim or Steve today. You can learn more about that by calling 5272041 or going to 24 oh three. Professional drive out in

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the county center. Go right in, talk to them personally or call on the phone and get additional information. Do you have a, well, we know we just mentioned a visitor's center I believe at Guatemala. Do you have any visitors center at any of the other regional

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parks? We have a public information center that we run out of the santa rosa veteran's memorial building, but one of the nice things that's happening with the department is at spring Lake. There has been money set aside for a visitors center to be constructed there. And

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we anticipate construction starting as early as july perhaps early august there. You name that it hasn't been named yet. Not officially yet. There's a move afoot to name it for a former good friend of ours. I've heard of that, but I don't know we won't mention

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that we're not going to put anybody on the spot. We've got about two moments here, two or three minutes, two or three minutes. Uh, one of the things I want to get across is is there's no phone numbers. Again, that's the way people get information. Are

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there brochures about each of the parks or a brochure? Yes. I think that in about two weeks we'll have our brochures ready for public distribution and whatnot. They can contact those numbers and we'll take a waiting list. In the meantime, we do have an older brochure

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that is available, but we are updating all of our brochures. Now with those brochures, have a little information about the park itself. Exactly. We hope to have within the next month or so various brochures, depending upon the interests of a person, will have a coastal brochure

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will have the general county brochure. We'll have a coastal brochure brochure on, on campgrounds and trails and so on and so forth. So we're trying to specialize some of our brochures because of the types of questions that we've had over the years is to give specific

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information to groups or persons that might want specific areas that they're interested within. The park's. Well, it's really over the years. I've followed the growth of the park system here and it's, it's been phenomenal. And I think the thing that's most important about what you people

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have done is that you've developed the kind of part that seems to be needed in the given areas. You mentioned a moment ago that there are the various kinds of like Healdsburg beaches. One thing Maxwell Park is something else, but both fulfilled the need just beautifully

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there. How do you feel about the Sonoma County park system after coming from the federal government work system? I'm really impressed with the system here and I think we've got one of the best systems in California Rich. I'd like to also mention that we've got another

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information number that the folks out there in contact and that's at our public information center and that number is 5 to 47175 And 5247175. Right. And that, that's kind of a place where you can just get public information on what goes on in the regional parks.

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Well, gentlemen, I think we've covered the regional parks as well as we can in the time allotted. Thanks a million gym for coming over to have you back. Maybe we'll come back later in the year or something. We'll talk about what happened during the off seasons.

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What's planned for next year? Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Richard McGlinchey. The program is Cinema Canada 90. My guests have been steve Phelps operation manager and Jim Angelo, director of regional Parks for Sonoma County. We found out more about our wonderful park system. Take advantage

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of it. It's something unusual. The cost is very minimal and you really have a ball until next week. Good luck, good health to each and every one of you go out and enjoy our parks. You'll never regret a moment you spent there.