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California announces plan to prevent park closures
2009-09-26
LOS ANGELES (AFP) - California has drafted a cost-cutting plan aimed at preventing the closure of state parks as the region tackles its budget woes, officials said Friday. A statement from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said a plan achieving 14.2 million dollars in savings had been hammered out after talks between the state parks department and the department of finance. Schwarzenegger had earlier this year threatened widescale closure of around 100 parks across California as part of a multi-billion-dollar package of spending cuts, a move that angered ecologists and the public. However that scenario had been averted after agreement was reached on a series of measures including offering reduced opening hours on weekdays and freezing expenditure on equipment such as vehicles. "Working closely with my Departments of Finance and Parks and Recreation, we have successfully found a way to avoid closing parks this year," Schwarzenegger said in a statement. "This is fantastic news for all Californians." California passed a budget in July to close the state's 26.3-billion-dollar deficit, a crisis that had pushed the state to the brink of bankruptcy.
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