The cost to visit Saguaro National Park could rise to $15 next year/Kurt Repanshek
Saguaro National Park is taking comments on a proposal to increase its entrance fee from $10 to $15 to help address maintenance projects in the park.
The last time that the Arizona park increased the seven-day vehicle entrance fee was in 2005. Since then, the park's deferred maintenance costs have increased to $16 million, the park said. Projects planned for 2017 include repairing Cactus Forest, Douglas Springs, and Heartbreak Ridge trails, as well as improving the auditorium of the Red Hills Visitor Center in the park’s west district. User fees also support projects to engage youth throughout the park.
“100 percent of the fees collected at Saguaro National Park remain in the park to support visitor facilities and services,” park Superintendent Darla Sidles said in a release. “This fee increase would enable the park to reduce the backlog in our deferred maintenance.”
From entrance to Death Valley National Park to camping at Great Smoky Mountains National Park to tours at Gettysburg National Military Park, sites across the country have proposed fee increases this year.
If approved, the increase will go into effect Jan. 1, 2017. It would help bring the park into alignment with the entry costs for other similar parks, a phased process that began in 2015. An annual pass will remain $35.
To comment
- Deadline: Aug. 22, 2016
- Email: [email protected]
- Mail: Superintendent; Saguaro National Park; 3693 South Old Spanish Trail, Tucson, AZ 85730
Comments
The good ole "Deferred Maintenance Mantra". I can see Jarvis sitting around the moustache club meetings, cigar in hand, saying,"Well, we can't cry about our budgets anymore because they have been steadily increasing, so let's push this. If we say it enough, it will outshout anyone who takes a hard look at all this stuff." To his credit, they have made up an arbitrary billions of dollars number and the public has bought it, hook line and sinker. National FEEE Service