The public perception is that the FY2012 Oklahoma Executive Budget proposal is a death knell to state efforts to provide public safety, education, stream gaging, water quality monitoring, cleanup and maintenance along the Illinois River, Flint Creek Barren Fork Creek and the 500,000 visitors for recreation each year. The half-million river users, if all from Oklahoma, would equate to approximately 1 out of every 6 persons residing in the state. (Actually, many of the dollars dropped into local coffers are ‘import’ tourism dollars, drawn from other states.)
The proposed budget probably does not take into account the additional costs that will be incurred at the state level in order to accommodate the differences between being a conservation agency to being a recreation and law enforcement agency. It isn’t known whether Oklahoma Corporation Commission has overtime policies for weekend and holiday work—which are OSRC peak-load times. If so, overtime policies would increase the operational cost over the existing staffing cost estimates.
OSRC operates nine hours per day year round, Monday thru Friday. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, OSRC is open 8-5 seven days per week. This amounts to 28 days of peak-time service in addition to the 45-hour work weeks, or 252 extra peak-load hours during tourist season, plus and added approximate 180 hours annually of extended-day for a grand total of 2,412 service hours per year. This is accomplished with no premium cost because employees stagger their hours and are paid salary rather than hourly. A key factor in these hours is because the need for services correlates with river use—weekends and long days in warm weather. Recreation peak-loads are countervalent to usual business office hours. Eight to nine staff members operate the basics of the OSRC.1 In addition to the administrator/chief law enforcement officer Ed Fite, year-round staffing includes two additional full time River Rangers, three maintenance workers, an administrative manager and a clerk. As many as 20 people work in law enforcement and maintenance during the peak season.2 In many instances, Community Service laborers are supervised from local courts for litter abatement and public access area cleanup. These added workers are in addition to the budgeted posts, and only the management cost of these workers is subsumed in the budget. In other instances, conservation groups and local churches and other entities send volunteers for river cleanups where the garbage bags, canoes, and even heavy equipment and solid waste disposal tipping fees are comped by community philanthropists. A strong collaboration ethic and appreciation for the river makes it difficult to put a dollar amount on the actual true cost of river management if it were not for the community relationships which are built, day by day, locally.
Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commissioner Steve Randall, elected by Adair County stakeholders, praised Ed Fite, the OSRC staff and volunteers for the work they accomplish. “The team is made up of informed, selfless and understanding employees and volunteers who value the greater good and work hard grappling with all the complex issues of the day,” he said. “Never again will I be naively content to take our Oklahoma scenic rivers for granted.”3
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