An agreement between the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and the Franklin County Conservation Board, that would have allowed the county to take over management of Beeds Lake State Park, recently fell through.
The conservation board first made the announcement in a Facebook post Wednesday. Franklin County Conservation Director Ned Parker says after consideration of the board’s budget and public input, the board was unable to reach an agreement that would benefit both sides.
“The board wanted to look at it from all angles and obviously community feedback was definitely very important, but also they’re looking out for the county financially. That was one of the things is they wanted to make sure that any agreement that was reached would be beneficial for the conservation board. And what I mean by that is with the limited budget that we have, we wanted to make sure that the revenue generated by the park was going to cover the expenses required for the park. The way the terms of the agreement were at that time, we didn’t feel like that was going to be a good arrangement. So we had asked for a few other stipulations, which the DNR did not agree with, which is totally fine. You know, the state has to make sure it’s a good deal for the state and the county has to make sure it’s a good deal for the county. So yeah, at this time, we weren’t able to reach agreement, which we felt was mutually beneficial.”
Parker says the board was looking to add more stipulations to an agreement before the decision was made.
“So at the board meeting on Monday, the conservation board discussed it in great detail and had basically a list of items that they would like added to the agreement. So I took those items to the DNR and then they responded with, ‘we’re just going to go ahead and continue to maintain the park.’ So they didn’t feel it was beneficial for them. The park ranger house that has been vacant for quite some time, they’re going to be removing that building and then they will be replacing the employee, not with a park ranger, but with a park manager instead.”
Parker says the board appreciates all public input from the community.
Full interview with Ned Parker here;
