Forest, Parks and Recreation outlines FY27 capital plan emphasizing toilets, roads and seasonal housing

Commissioner Danielle Biscoe told the Senate Institutions committee on Feb. 26 that the Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation’s FY27 capital proposal is organized into three primary funding buckets: parks infrastructure and rehabilitation for the 55 designated state parks; public-lands access ("play") projects on lands outside designated parks; and clean-water investments targeting road segments that contribute sediment to waterways.

"We have about $280,000,000 of assets across state parks with over 1,000 structures and 40 miles of piping on the ground," Biscoe said, framing the scale of deferred maintenance. She said the department is proposing $200,000 in capital for the clean-water line in Section 10 (line 91) for FY27, which when combined with other clean-water general-fund dollars brings the FY27 clean-water package to roughly $1.2 million. Biscoe also cited an estimate that the State Forest Highway system needs about $4,550,000,000 to reach desired standards.

Frank Spalding, parks project manager, described how the parks-infrastructure money is managed inside the park system in three internal categories: small-scale projects (for example, an accessible…