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Funding map shows gaps in maintenance and statewide recreation education, commission recommends options
Summary
A strategic funding map presented by Dr. Smith highlighted large flexible TRCC/TRT funding pools, spatial inequities between where funds are generated and where recreation occurs, and shortfalls in dedicated maintenance and education funding for outdoor recreation.
Dr. Smith and a graduate student presented the commission with a funding map that categorizes recreation and tourism funding into four buckets: tourism/promotion, infrastructure development, maintenance, and research/education. The map shows that large, flexible pools (TRCC and TRT funds) are generated primarily in more populous counties while much outdoor recreation activity and associated management needs occur in less populous gateway counties.
Presenters called attention to a gap in dedicated, statewide funding for maintenance of recreation infrastructure and for coordinated, statewide outdoor-education programs. Dr. Smith recommended options such as increasing counties— ability to roll over TRT/TRCC balances across years, expanding the flexible portion of dedicated maintenance funds (for example the 5% RRI carve-out), and exploring shared stewardship or co‑management frameworks that explicitly include cities and counties.
Commissioners responded that the report is a useful reference for legislative outreach and programming; they encouraged further edits, stressed coordination with county governments, and urged that education and maintenance gaps be emphasized in future caucus and legislative discussions.
