County budget includes $5M for open space acquisition

The County of San Diego’s 2007-08 budget includes $5 million for open space acquisition.

The money could be spent on acquiring land for open space preserves, including those which will be incorporated into the Multiple Species Conservation Program. The money may also be spent on other open space uses.

“It’s for open space acquisitions basically,” said Trish Boaz, the chief of the Resource Management Division of the county’s Department of Parks and Recreation. “It could be a regional park. It doesn’t necessarily need to be for MSCP acquisition.”

The money will likely be used to leverage state and Federal grants for open space acquisition. The county plans to apply for state Proposition 84 grants created by the passage of a

November 2006 ballot measure which included $500 million for parks and nature education facilities, $450 million for forest and wildlife conservation, and $414 million for conservancies and river parkway programs. The state will also be administering a $23 million U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant for habitat plans, including the MSCP, in San Diego County. “We have our match appropriated for a large amount of that 23 million,” Boaz said.

While the county plans to use some of the open space acquisition funds to leverage that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grant, it hasn’t yet determined the exact locations of the acquisitions.

The open space acquisition money could be used to acquire additional land for the future San Luis Rey River Park. “That would be an area we will be looking at,” Boaz said.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved the county’s 2007-08 budget on June 19. Any specific acquisition transactions would need to go before the Board of Supervisors for approval.

“The more lands we buy, the more we have to be open to the public in the future,” Boaz said.