Part with the park?

For nearly 90 years, Valley residents have gone to Eschbach Park for picnics, games and relaxing strolls.

But now it appears the park is headed for the same fate as other former Yakima County parks.

County officials want to turn the park over to another group to run it or even sell the land in order to deal with a large shortfall in next year's budget.

The 50-acre park on South Naches Road, northwest of Yakima, is among the cuts so far identified to narrow the county's budget gap from $3.4 million to $2.2 million.

Other cuts being considered include lowering jail funding, reducing money to the Yakima Health District and Cooperative Extension, and restricting the use of carryover funds by departments.

What's left will likely come from layoffs, said county Commissioner Mike Leita, probably from the criminal justice system, which accounts for the lion's share of spending by the county.

"We don't have anything left to trim," he told fellow commissioners during a budget review last week. "We are scraping bone." Jettisoning Eschbach will be the most visible sign of cuts and will essentially put the county out of the parks business.

The county has transferred its three other major parks since 2003.

"What you are seeing in Yakima County is not unlike what is happening around the rest of the state," said Josh Weiss, a policy director with the Washington State Association of Counties in Olympia.

Cash-strapped King County, he noted, is considering closing or transferring 39 of its parks next year.

"It illustrates that there's a major issue across the state about how to maintain parks and recreation programs," Weiss said.

Nationally, hard statistics are difficult to come by. But Margie Walz, president of the National Association of County Park and Recreation Officials, said there's plenty of anecdotal evidence parks are taking cuts.

"What we are seeing is ... most government agencies are under extreme financial pressure to try to do more with less, or are just cutting back," she said.

First opened by Edward and Irene Sandmeyer Eschbach in 1920, the park was purchased by the county in 1968.

Nestled along the Naches River, it offers softball fields, basketball courts, areas for playing volleyball and horseshoe pits. It also has a 2-acre pond for kayaking and a running stream for inflatables.

County officials say the park gets from about 25,000 to 30,000 visitors annually.

Closing the park would save $50,000 in annual operating costs.

Leita said the county would like to see an organization take over the park's operations.

That's what did with three other parks starting six years ago.

West Valley Community Park on South 80th Avenue went to the city of Yakima. Sunnyside assumed ownership of SunnyView Park on Yakima Valley Highway. And Ahtanum Youth Activities Park became the property of Union Gap.

Unlike those parks, however, Eschbach isn't adjacent to a city. And even if it were, it's questionable whether any could take on the responsibility.

"Cities are in slightly better (fiscal) condition than counties, but they are still having problems," Weiss said.

One possibility is to turn the property over to the Yakima Greenway Foundation, which operates miles of pathways and a number of parks along the Yakima River and Naches River.

However, county officials are looking at the possibility is rezoning the property to allow some form of development and increase its value at auction. The property is zoned as rural remote, which requires lots of at least 40 acres. Land designated as remote is considered unlikely to be developed.

The property has an assessed value of $259,000, according to the county Assessor's Office.

Commissioner Kevin Bouchey agrees the county will have to make what he called some "hard cuts."

Even with the park's closure, layoffs may have to come from crime-fighting departments, such as the prosecutor, courts, sheriff, assigned counsel, clerk and juvenile that make up 80 percent of all county spending for day-to-day operations.

The county eliminated more than 30 mostly vacant positions to balance this year's operating budget at $53.5 million. About 1,000 people work for the county. With more cuts still to be made, the 2010 spending plan currently is at $54.9 million.

Property tax, sales tax and investment earnings are the county's largest revenue sources. Combined, the three are expected to decline by more than $200,000 next year.

Investment earnings will take the biggest hit because of low interest rates and are projected to fall by half a million dollars from estimates earlier this year.

The trend is expected to continue next year.

Commissioners had an escape valve last year -- pulling $1 million from reserves currently about $6 million, to balance the budget.

That won't happen next year because any use of reserves would have to be paid back within two years under a county policy.

With the economy remaining sluggish, borrowing would only make things worse in 2011, commissioners said.

"It would be foolish to start borrowing," Bouchey said.

Local governments are facing some of the most difficult financial times of the last 20 or 30 years, said Weiss, the policy director with the Association of Counties.

"It's a bigger hit to what we are used to dealing with in the past," he said. "The conversation you hear at the state and local level is really not necessarily 'What do we do to weather this storm?' It's 'How do we adapt?'"

* David Lester can be reached at 509-577-7674 or dlester@yakimaherald.com.