Springwater Park: Broken cash machine not helping cash flow

By Cheryl Browne, Barrie Examiner January 15, 2013

SPRINGWATER TWP. – The honour system is broken at Springwater Park.

No one in their right mind is going to deny the provincial government is in a fiscal deficit.

And perhaps the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) has made a tough decision when it comes to closing down eight provincial parks in Ontario.

Although its April 2011 State of Ontario’s Protected Areas Report is seemingly proud of the 9.5 million hectares in the province’s 630 parks, and touts that 55% of Ontarians use them annually, they’re being forced to look at their bottom line.

Dollar figures in the report show Ontario Parks generated close to a half-billion dollars in 2008-09. To be precise, that’s $495 million in what they call value-added dollars to the provincial coffers.

But Springwater Park hasn’t paid its fair share to that value-added envelope in the last four years for a very simple reason: The cash machine at the front gate is broken and has been since the report was written. Even with summer students watching the gate for half the year, losing six months revenue each year for four years is a sure-fire guarantee to close any business.

Former days of stuffing a few bucks in an envelope at the gate has gone the way of five-cent hamburgers, so people visiting the park see the broken automated teller and just drive on through.

The AWARE Simcoe group made a presentation to Simcoe County Warden Cal Patterson, with all their much-harvested facts and figures to prove why Springwater Park is worth saving.

As one of their spokespeople, Don Morgan, points out, “Springwater Park is the heart and soul of that area. It’s one of the few places where we can enjoy some of the nice things in nature. So what do we do? We decide in our great wisdom to close it.”

Morgan and his allies aren’t getting bent out of shape because the MNR says the park is in need of expensive upgrading to some of the pens that house the 29 orphaned wild animals that live there.

“Of course it needs a lot of renovations. If they hadn’t let them deteriorate so badly over the last 25 years, it wouldn’t cost so much to upgrade them now,” Morgan said.

When it comes to closing the gates permanently on March 31, two separate citizens groups have been hastily formed, Save Springwater Provincial Park and Friends of Springwater, and are garnering plenty of media attention. They’ve set up websites, blogs and a booth at the Barrie Farmers’ Market to hand out pins and lawn signs in support of the park.

Annual employee and wildlife upkeep dollar figures are bandied about. The MNR suggests it’s $59,000 for the wildlife, AWARE Simcoe says $77,000 a year and Innisfil Deputy Mayor Dan Davidson suggests with staffing charges – up to 10 in the summer months – it could cost close to $300,000 per year.

Davidson doesn’t think they’re closing the park because it costs too much to feed the wildlife. He’s looking at the province’s fiscal noose and suggests upgrading old parks – such as the century-old Springwater Park – has everything to do with future costs.

“It’s not just the cages and stuff that hasn’t been updated for years. It’s the Accessibility Act that’s going to have a huge effect on their decision,” Davidson said.

“Upgrading all of those washrooms and facilities, that’s going to costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in all those parks. That’s the current problem facing the government on all levels. Closing those eight parks reduces those tremendous costs.”

Davidson points to a new door system for an Innisfil library that rang up a $200,000 bill.

“Who can afford that?” he asked.

MNR spokeswoman Jolanta Kowalski said closing Springwater was not based on the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act.“The province’s Accessibility Act standards played no role in our decision to change the designation of parks,” Kowalski wrote in an e-mail Monday. “These parks have low visitation rates, low cost recovery and required extensive capital repairs to maintain safe, quality facilities.”

Sandy Mangat, with of the Ministry of Community and Social Services, said the standards that came into play this month – good until 2015 – do not necessitate the need for major upgrades to make the park accessible.

“There’s no requirements for anybody to retrofit existing space. It’s on a go-forward basis only,” Mangat said.

“When people look to improve, it’s always best to look at it as a phase-in approach. But in the initial plans, that’s not in the standards.”

Once you take the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act out of the picture, it comes back to Square 1, which was a dearth of customers walking and driving through the gate to pay for the upgrades and animal care.

Derek Cherun spent Saturday morning manning the Springwater Park Citizen’s Coalition booth at the farmers’ market.

In the afternoon, he and his wife, Karen, and their two children, Leeann and Adam, were throwing a stick for their dog, Molly, in the unseasonably warm sunlight.

Although the Cheruns said they buy a provincial park day pass each year — which allows them to enter all parks from April to November — they had noticed the payment counter at Springwater was closed, and the machine used for payment is out of order.

“There were two cars ahead of us, so that’s three cars that would have paid to come in here,” Karen Cherun said. “At $14 a car, that’s $42 they lost in a matter of minutes.”