Recreation Sites and Trails Staff
Recreation Sites and Trails is business line in Provincial Operations with line of sight to regions and districts.Recreation Sites and Trails consists of 30 regular and 8.5 auxiliary positions.More than 90% of recreation staff work at region and district offices in 22 locations across B C.
Recreation Sites and Trails were identified as one of the top 20 work units in Government in 2007/08 and 2008/09.
Budget
Recreation Sites and Trails
20010/11 Budget: $6.3 M
• $4.3 M Base
• $2 M Community Development Trust, Job Opportunities Program -Ending March 2011
Other resources leveraged to off-set operating costs
• $2.0 M user fees
• $0.54 M estimated value of volunteer hours
• Wildfire Protection Crews – estimate of hours not available
• Engineering – estimate of road maintenance costs to high value recreation sites and trails not available
Spirit of 2010 Trail
There are currently no allocated operational funds to maintain the Spirit of 2010 Trail.
Recreation Site and Trail Operations
A partnership model for managing recreation sites and trails was introduced in 2003.
• Partners are responsible for:
– maintaining recreation sites and trails
– supervising use at recreation sites and trails (in some cases)
– covering the cost of services provided
• Agreements may be for up to 10 years
• Government is responsible for
– infrastructure replacement and other large operating cost items such as toilet pumping, hazard tree abatement, and infrastructure replacement.
– providing third party liability insurance to agreement holders.
There are currently 272 partnership agreements for managing 373 recreation sites and 200 recreation trails. Partners include 14 First Nations bands, community groups, outdoor recreation organizations, forest companies, regional districts, municipal governments, etc. Partners contributed 46 person years worth of work in 2009/10 User fees collected at 105 recreation sites and 41 trails, in 2009/10, generated more than $2.0 M and enabled partners to off-set their costs of managing the site or trail.
Model for Managing Recreation Sites and Trails in 2011/12
Focus will be on maintaining the 70% of the recreation sites and 40% of the trails that meet the standards of “Market Ready”. Remaining recreation sites and trails will be managed as user maintained and will either be upgraded to the “Market Ready” standard or closed over time.