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Supporting Santa Clara Co. parks
by Brian Schmidt

Property of the Santa Clara County Parks Department

For over forty years, the Committee for Green Foothills has worked to do more than protect particularly important open space areas in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties. We have sought to ensure that our counties have strong, fiscally-healthy, and well-managed systems for acquiring and managing public open spaces. While much of the attention has focused in recent years on the two open space districts, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District and the Santa Clara County Open Space Authority, the Committee has also fought for strong county parks in both counties.

Harvey Bear Ranch — new Santa Clara County Park
Santa Clara County has a great funding advantage in its park system. For thirty years, the County Charter has set aside a small percentage of property tax revenues for acquisition, development, and maintenance of County parks. This stable funding source allows for multi-year planning and orderly development of new parks to accommodate the vastly increased population of our region. The advantage played out clearly last year. While San Mateo County parks faced prospects of shutdowns and vastly-curtailed services, Santa Clara County worked on opening a large new County park, Harvey Bear Ranch, near Morgan Hill and Gilroy.

The Parks Charter Fund exists because, in six separate elections, Santa Clara County voters have enacted and re-enacted County Charter amendments that set up the fund. The current charter will expire in 2008. In order to provide the long-term planning horizon that parks need, parks supporters are putting plans in place to ask the voters to renew the funding in June 2006.

Help support parks charter renewal
Yes on Parks! is a new coalition of parks supporters that is moving this process forward. The Committee for Green Foothills has worked to support a renewed charter on multiple occasions over the last year, and we expect to continue and increase our involvement over the next year. For more information, see the Frequently Asked Questions. We look forward to a healthy County parks system that will continue well into the future.