Tag: Park

Pursuing a rare opportunity, Madison may soon spend $5.5 million to buy 3.65 acres of shoreline property on Lake Monona next to Olin Park. Ald. Allen Arntsen, 13th District, who represents the site, two other council members and Mayor Paul Soglin on Tuesday will introduce a resolution to purchase properties at 330 and 342 E. Lakeside St. from the Wisconsin Medical Society. The property is currently improved, with a two-story, 41,026-square-foot office building and a surface parking lot. “The acquisition of lakefront property by the city is rare,” parks superintendent Eric Knepp said. “The Parks Division has successfully acquired a few individual lots of lakefront property to expand existing parks in the past decade — Merrill Springs and Esther Beach Parks — but it is very uncommon to have a 3.65-acre acquisition on the lake adjacent to an existing park. The city has long eyed the property as an addition to its parkland holdings and has held a first right of refusal to buy it since 1996, when the city purchased adjacent land from the medical society. The society contacted the city to discuss its interest, and the sides have been negotiating for the past few months, Knepp said. The medical society acquired the property in 1955 and began construction on an initial structure there that year with additions in the late 1960s and 1990s, said Dr. The medical society has long envisioned following its initial sale to the city decades ago with a sale of its headquarters property to the city for more parkland, and now that the building is far larger than the society’s needs, it’s time to make the transaction, Chumbley said.

Human feces, overflowing garbage, illegal off-roading and other damaging behavior in fragile areas were beginning to overwhelm some of the West’s iconic national parks, as a partial government shutdown left the areas open to visitors but with little staff on duty. “It’s a free-for-all,” Dakota Snider, 24, who lives and works in Yosemite Valley, said by telephone Monday, as Yosemite National Park officials announced closings of some minimally supervised campgrounds and public areas within the park that are overwhelmed. “It’s so heartbreaking. “We’re concerned there’ll be impacts to visitors’ safety.” “It’s really a nightmare scenario,” Garder said. Campers at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California’s deserts were reporting squabbles as different families laid claims to sites, with no rangers on hand to adjudicate, said Ethan Feltges, who operates the Coyote Corner gift shop outside Joshua Tree. Feltges and other business owners around Joshua Tree had stepped into the gap as much as possible, hauling trailers into the park to empty overflowing trash bins and sweeping and stocking restrooms that were still open, Feltges said. Feltges himself had set up a portable toilet at his store to help the visitors still streaming in and out of the park. Joshua Tree said it would begin closing some campgrounds for all but day use. Visitors were allowing their dogs to run off-leash in an area rich with bears and other wildlife, and scattering bags of garbage along the roads, Snider said. In Yellowstone National Park, private companies have picked up some of the maintenance normally done by federal workers.

“It’s kind of surreal,” Paula McIntyre, a communications consultant from Cedar, Mich., said of the deadlock at the nation’s capital and its impact on — of all things — national parks. The shutdown didn’t prevent Ms. McIntyre from walking the historic battlefield with her family. But the actions of lawmakers and President Trump hung in the chilly air — as did signs tacked to the visitor center explaining its closure. National parks such as River Raisin are dealing with a partial government shutdown that doesn’t seem to be headed toward a quick resolution. The National Park Service is deciding case-by-case which parks to close and what services to prioritize during the shutdown. I think it’s Trump fault,” said Doug Minidis with a laugh. “The government [workers] would gladly have it open, but those who have a different agenda refuse to compromise.” Mr. Minidis said he’s a history buff and enjoys learning about sites such as River Raisin. This is our American history. America has always been great and will always be great.” Susan McIntyre, Paula McIntyre’s mother, who lives in Monroe, said you can’t blame government workers for something they can’t control. “She’s right,” Susan McIntyre said.

Those are the same veterans and blue collars who helped put Trump in the White House, he said. Tommy Hartnett, Arthur Ravenel Jr., Henry Brown, Tim Scott and Mark Sanford — representing 38 years of continual service — have been invited to take part in a recognition and fundraiser sponsored by the Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester GOPs. Parnell’s campaign website and fundraising outlet remains out of service, taken down by disgruntled staffers after they ditched his campaign following the revelation. But nationally, Democrats have moved on from the race. President Donald Trump has said he flat-out does not like Mark Sanford, but apparently he does like one of Sanford’s D.C. budget ideas. During a Tuesday lunch with members of Congress, Trump voiced his support for a plan to reign in federal spending. It was the same concept Sanford outlined in a bill he sponsored in April. Known as the “penny plan,” the bill calls on Congress to reduce federal spending by 1 percent each year. “There’s a group in the House that’s ready to cut spending,” Graves said. Trump then eyed his White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, who was formerly a South Carolina congressman.