The department submitted a plan for an emergency maintenance fund at the beginning of the past session, which was adapted into House Bill 3972. The bill includes an eight-year plan for the department listing all the maintenance and repairs needed in the state parks, going from greatest to least concern. "There are projects that if not fixed within the next 12 months, will likely lead to us having to shut down part of the park or the entire park because there would be a danger to our visitors or our staff," said Shelley Zumwalt, the executive director of the Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Wildlife.
The most desperately needed repairs are for potable water lines, sewer lines, natural gas lines and electrical upgrades along with remodeling or repairing over 26 different restroom locations across the state parks. Other concerns include an unrepaired cave-in at Alabaster Caverns and exterior repair of cabins at Lake Murray and Beavers Bend. Almost all of these concerns are listed under the priority category “Health and Safety.
” The estimated cost of all these urgently needed repairs is $75 million. The appropriation for the coming year, through the new Oklahoma Capital Assets Maintenance and Protection Fund, is $12.5 million.
This appropriation, along with the $9.5 million from sales and use taxes the department receives yearly, gives the department $22 million for deferred maintenance, only 30% of the funding needed to pay for the first year of repairs in the eight-year plan. Money from the OCAMP Fund will also go to pay for deferred maintenance projects at colleges and state-owned buildings.
Because the money is split up, no agency got full funding for needed repairs. “This is the first time that I can think of in recent history that we really started to address and recognize the real deferred maintenance needs in this state, and there are a lot but I think the Legislature took a giant step in starting to address these needs,” said Sen. Chuck Hall, R-Perry, who sponsored the OCAMP Fund bill and chairs the Appropriations Committee.
Paying to maintain state assets has not previously been a big priority for Oklahoma, but Hall says this is changing. He believes that the Legislature has tackled deferred maintenance, and it will be able to continue in the coming session. “It's been my approach from day one that if the state of Oklahoma has an asset we need to fix it, or we need to sell it, or we need to repair it.
It's important that we take care of these state assets and prepare a long-term maintenance plan,” Hall said. Without full funding for the long-term maintenance plan the Department of Tourism and Recreation have made, important projects, like replacing sewage lines at Sequoyah State Park, will have to be balanced against many other urgent concerns. "Sequoyah is one of our largest parks not just in visitation, but also in the fact that our lodge there is the largest out of anyone in the state.
And then also the, just the sheer number of cabins, RV sites and tent camping sites,” said Zumwalt. “It's a park that has a lot to do. It's the closest park we have, I would say, to a resort.
There's a pool, there's a splash pad and the lake. There's just a ton of stuff to do there, and with that comes a lot of maintenance." The sewage lines at Sequoyah were installed over 30 years ago and ceramic pipe was used, which over time has crumbled.
Emergency maintenance was done last year, but there are still more repairs required. Listen now and subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS Feed | SoundStack | All Of Our Podcasts Even creating a list of the problems that need to be addressed was difficult, as the agency has been existing for decades without proper funding for maintenance costs. So state park employees had given up on reporting maintenance concerns to the department, knowing that the problems would not be handled.
"When I got to the agency, there was not a list of the deferred maintenance,” said Zumwalt. “And it was terrifying because I'm going to visit these parks and all these managers are telling me about all these things that are imminently breaking." Without proper funding to fix issues immediately, the department and the parks end up addressing issues only when they become actual emergencies.
“This agency has been in a reactive posture for decades now, as opposed to a proactive posture,” said Zumwalt. Until everything is properly funded, the agency will have to come back to the legislature each year with requests for larger and larger appropriations. This is not only because problems that cannot be repaired immediately will be more expensive to fix as they worsen, but also because the cost of everything is increasing.
“You know, we're competing for resources,” said Zumwalt. “And so essentially that $350 million list, if we were to get the same amount of money next year, there would be things that would need to fall off of it to keep to that total.” Besides the increasing price, some of the most urgent repairs needed are less than glamorous, which Zumwalt admits is another hurdle in getting funding for them.
"We have some beautiful lodges that have been redone recently, right? And of course, I'm not going to question that investment, because obviously I get to talk about them,” said Zumwalt. “But underneath those lodges, there is a ton of infrastructure that is not exciting, and we're not going to cut any ribbons for them. The things that actually make the pretty things function, they're too easy to ignore, until they become a crisis.
" Without proper funding the agency will have to choose which parks to close so it is possible to budget for the maintenance of the remaining assets. The Tulsa World is where your story lives.
