Grant County loses funding for Moses Lake sand dunes

Source: Columbia Basin Herald

EPHRATA — The Grant County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a way to replace $200,000 of state money used to run the Moses Lake sand dunes.

The state took the money used for the Non-highway and Off-Road Vehicle Activities Program, transferring it to state parks in the 2009 and 2010 biennium. This included the $200,000 the sheriff’s office used to pay for maintenance, officers and education about the park. The majority of the budget is spent on the two officers assigned to the park.

While the county contributed $144,000 this year to match the grant, Chief Deputy Dave Ponozzo said it’s unlikely the county could contribute more, and there wasn’t any way of transferring the money from other areas of the sheriff’s office budget.

“We’re looking at a loss of manpower,” he said. “My primary concern is we’ve come a long ways in the management of those sand dunes to end up where we are today ... We’ve got to do something to make sure this park stays open for a lot of reasons.”

Ponozzo pointed out these reasons include tourism money from people using the sand dunes.

He added there’s no way to close down the sand dunes to the public since the area is a combination of state, county and private land.

“What we’re here for today is to get some kind of solution from you guys, the users, the tourism groups, the places of business in and around Grant County that do business based on the fact we have the sand dunes there,” Ponozzo told the crowd in the commissioner’s hearing room Wednesday. “We need your help. We don’t have the answers to what we can do there to maintain this park.”

While the state told the sheriff’s office the loss of funding is temporary, Ponozzo said he’s skeptical about whether the money is coming back.

People at the meeting discussed several possible solutions, including user fees, grants and trying to get the money back from the state.

Lance Cornell, owner of Experience Powersports in Moses Lake, suggested the county and users start looking for other grants to help fill the gap left by the state.

“One specifically is Yamaha’s strongly encouraging OHV (off-highway vehicle) grant application,” he said. “We’ve seen a number of funds there. They’re very anxious, because I’ve talked to them about this, to do something in Washington state.”

He suggested forming a group to try to go after these grants and figure out how much money is needed, volunteering his facility for meetings.

Cornell mentioned groups plan to file civil lawsuits against the state to try to get the money back.

Rich Archer, a member of the Sand Scorpions, an off-road vehicle group, agreed he doesn’t want to see the sand dunes close, saying his group does a lot of events in the park.

“The state has really put their kibosh to this here and I think we’ve got to figure out how to get through this thing,” he said. “I agree with Lance that we need to get a committee started up with a few users (and) the sheriff’s (office).”

Archer said he was skeptical about user fees, adding the state already makes people pay for off-road vehicle tags. The money from those tags used to fund the sheriff’s office.

Marvin Williamson suggested a specialty license plate to put money back into the dunes.

“We didn’t want to bring that up to the state to fast, because we figured they’d jump right on it. We wanted to see if we could dedicate those funds directly to off-roading,” he said.

Mick Hansen asked about allowing one of the groups using the park to patrol the area, taking the pressure off the sheriff’s department.

“Maybe they can designate one or two people there during the off-hours, so that when there is a crowd there, the deputies could be there, but on the off hours, when the people are sometimes there, sometimes making the trouble, the Sand Scorpions or one of the other groups ... could go down there,” he said.

By the end of the meeting, the group decided to form a committee with users and sheriff’s deputies to explore ways to get funding for the dunes.