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New fee
structure for South Cove Park approved
By Patrick Neal
 The
next time you plan to visit South Cove Park, you’ll want to bring a
couple of extra bucks with you.
The Oconee County Commission approved a new fee
structure for the park at its June meeting. Under the new structure,
it will cost visitors a parking fee of $2 per day for a regular car,
and $5 per day for those towing boats. The county will collect those
fees year-round, seven days a week.
Previously, the park charged $2 per day for cars and
$3 per boat, but only Friday through Sunday, and only from Memorial
Day through Labor Day.
As it was initially proposed, the fee increases met
with considerable outcry from some Oconee County residents. In
addition to those who opposed paying fees in addition to property
taxes in principle, some residents who used the park daily or
several times a week said $2 per day could represent hundreds of
dollars in additional expenses for them over the course of a year.
According to Phil Shirley, director of Parks,
Recreation and Tourism for Oconee County, the fee structure adopted
in June addressed those concerns. County residents who use the park
frequently can buy an annual pass for a flat fee of $25. County
residents who are 62 or older can get that same annual pass for just
$15, as can veterans.
“If somebody uses the park on a regular basis, and
they’re one of our residents, that’s a pretty good deal for them,”
Shirley said.
Even though the new fees have been adopted, Shirley
said that the park wouldn’t actually start collecting them during
the week until mid-August, explaining that “Iron Ranger” collection
boxes wouldn’t be in place at South Cove until then.
Those boxes will be employed on weekdays. “It will be
an honor-type system,” Shirley said. “We don’t plan to be standing
out there with a ticket book or anything.” (Shirley added, however,
that park rangers on patrol would be making a note of those who
hadn’t obtained a parking stub from the honor boxes, and could issue
citations to violators.)
On weekends, Shirley said a park staffer would be on
hand to collect the fees. “That’s really as much to manage traffic
as anything,” he said. “When you have 30 or 40 boats coming in at
one time (on busy weekends), things can back up real quick if you’re
not careful.”
With an estimated 270,000 visitors annually, Shirley
said that South Cove is Oconee County’s most-used county park.
Even with the new fees, Shirley said that the money
collected at South Cove and Oconee’s other two parks might end up
covering 50 percent of the department’s annual budget of some
$600,000.
Throughout the process, Shirley said that both the
department and the Oconee County Council tried to strike a balance
between generating revenue and providing quality, low-cost
recreational facilities to county residents.
“We don’t want to price ourselves out of people
enjoying our parks,” he said.
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