Pinellas County leaders are considering funding cuts for two of the county’s most prominent nature preserves, Weedon Island and Shell Key Preserves, as they work to close a $42 million budget gap for the upcoming fiscal year.
Proposed Cuts
The proposed cuts include eliminating funding for the Weedon Island Preserve and its Cultural and Natural History Center and Shell Key Preserve starting January 1, 2027. The county maintains and operates both preserves, but the state owns the land and has leased it to Pinellas since 1995. If the budget is approved, the leases with the state would end and the land would be returned to the state.
Parks and Conservation Resources Director Paul Cozzie said in a recent email to stakeholders that they don’t ‘propose these reductions lightly.’ He says the cuts would decrease the budget by about $847,000. Cozzie wrote that departments county-wide have to make hard decisions due to ‘new state-imposed financial burden,’ like required increases to the pension funds for public safety and law enforcement officers.
Local Budget Decision Impact
Commissioners echoed Cozzie, saying the state continues to give them unfunded mandates, and local governments are forced to cut money in their budgets to pick up the tab. Chairman Dave Eggers of the Pinellas County Board of Commissioners said, ‘They provide virtually very little funding of their own for their own state parks… We’ve taken that on behalf of the state. We love that park. So, people that are listening in and have talked to us, that’s not a park that we’re targeting to get rid of [Weedon Island].’
Cozzie said they’d move staff affected, about seven positions, to other jobs within the department or somewhere else in county government. He said his department is also proposing ending the lifeguard programs at Fort De Soto and Sand Key Parks.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection sent a statement saying that if Pinellas County requests a release from their lease, they would seek to identify another entity to continue managing the properties for conservation and public outdoor recreation purposes.
Original reporting: Tampa Bay Florida News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.
