Whispering Pines Park Plan

Last night, I ventured to the east side of the county and took in the City of Inverness' public workshop on Whispering Pines park. I had to leave about an hour after it started, but I caught the presentation Eric Williams gave and a few questions from the citizens in the audience.

Hopefully the recorded it so I can go back and watch the rest of the questions.

100 or so people filled the chambers, so it was a pretty decent crowd.

The city kicked off the meeting with a slide presentation and walked through the history of the park... how it came to be... the partnership with the state... and so on. We were told the slides would be available for people to view them. Once I get that link, I will share it here.

Here is the history of the park

Williams went on to show that the original park plan in 1974 stated that the park would be deeded to the city at some point in the future. To date, that has not happened. He explained that it would take the state legislature, mainly Ralph Massullo and JJ Grow, to create a bill that will transfer ownership to the city.

For now, it is state owned, but the city has a sublease to operate it. This creates some problems because any money spent by the city potentially returns to the state at some point. This also does not allow the city to apply for some grants and things like that as it is not city owned.

That creates financial difficulties as you will see here shortly.

This is the fee schedule created in 1980 for people to use the park.

This shows that the RV idea came up around 2015 to help fund the park. However, in 2016, the city issued bonds for a Capital Action Plan to help fund some projects. The idea was to fund a few different projects.

This shows a fire station update and a community center built where the Boys and Girls club is located.

Part of the plan was to create more ballfields at Whispering Pines Park.

Another portion of the plan was to connect Forest Drive (and the park) to the Withlacoochee State Trail.

This is still being proposed as the City has asked for state appropriations. They have been awarded money by the legislature in the past, but it has been vetoed by the Governor.

The city ultimately decided to use most of the bonded money to build the Depot district.

The county started to fund the park a bit and the city consolidated the Parks and Recreation department and stabilized the Operating and Maintenance budget.

This chart shows the annual amount budgeted for Whispering Pines Park to operate and maintain it each year.

And this adjusts those numbers for inflation and shows what it would take today to equal past spending.

As you can see, it is getting more expensive each year to maintain and operate the park... but the budget has not increased to help with that.

With the park being outdated and more modern facilities being built throughout the county (YMCA for instance), the park is seeing fewer visitors.

This shows what it would cost to renovate everything and make it modern.

Keeping the current O/M budget of $640k per year, the park would need to increase revenues by $500k to $700k per year to help fund the renovations needed for the park.

The city finds that incredibly difficult to do under the current free park scenario, so they explored options to charge admission to the park.

At $5 per day, they would need 140k entries per year to generate the $500k revenue they need. If they sold annual passes for $50, they would need to sell 14k annual passes.

In short, the city feels that is an impossible number and they do not want to charge the residents to use the park facilities. They fear this will hurt the lower income families and take away their ability to use the park.

This is where the RV idea came back.

The proposed plan is to create 70 RV campsites across 7 or so acres of the park. If they can maintain a 75% stay rate at $50 per day, they would generate $958k per year. The would require roughly 53 RVs to be using the campground every day of the year.

The plan is to model it after the state camp grounds. Stays would be limited to 10 nights. They would then be required to leave the park. They would follow other similar rules as the state campgrounds as well.

The city claims there would be no impact to existing ball fields or facilities. They would remain opened and able to be used as they are today. The only difference is that they would allow RVs to stay overnight in the campground area.

They city feels this may be the best way to generate significant needed revenue for the city to help pay for the renovations and whatnot needed at the park. With using only 7 acres of the park, there will still be plenty of wooded space for recreation, ball field access would remain... and so on.

A couple of concerns from residents that I was there for.

1) What stops this from expanding beyond 70 campsites? If this is successful, what stops the city from wanting to add more campsites to create more revenues?

2) Someone suggested if they do this, to make it in the northern section of the park and not near the current ballfields. Make a separate RV entrance to the park away from the main entrances used by the leagues and sports teams.

3) Someone asked if the city could be more proactive in trying to recruit leagues and tournaments to try to offset some costs and create additional revenues... rather than build the RV sites.

4) Some concerns about people outside the county traveling here and staying here. We would have no idea who they were and they would be around children that use the park.

One thing I did not hear was the projected cost to build this and where that money is coming from. The video shown as part of this showed paved roadways and parking spaces for the RVs. Trees would be largely kept and campsites carved out... but all that paving, clearing, etc has a cost to it. What is that cost and how long would it take to recoup that investment?

What is the plan for the funds that are generated? They showed they had plans for the bonded funds to include a few things, but then the Depot ate most of it. What is the purpose of the proposed revenue? What are the improvements going to be? How long will it take for those to happen?

I could see real potential public buy in with this if they planned to expand the ball fields. As it is, leagues are struggling for space. If they added more ball fields with some of this revenue, that will certainly help. It will also help attract more tournaments and whatnot as a result.

So hopefully they show a more detailed plan as they move towards this idea. Show people exactly where the money will go and show how it will benefit the citizens of the city/county.

But last night was a start to the conversation. Hopefully people stay engaged and hopefully the city listens to that input.