This story from the January 12 issue of the Bee Arden Carmichael Community News, tells the good news of the final pay-off of the loan that added Fair Oaks Bluffs to the Parkway after ten years of effort and a final major donation by a local couple.
However, it doesn’t mention how the original purpose of the American River Parkway Foundation was to build an endowment to purchase additional land for the Parkway but somehow has become only a Parkway maintenance organization, which though obviously needed, sadly removes the larger, and ultimately more essential, need for an endowment fund building organization to acquire additional Parkway land.
This would be a primary function of the nonprofit management we are advocating for the Parkway, to raise such an endowment to provide funding for additional acquisition as well as maintenance.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
“A 10-year effort to purchase American River bluff land in Fair Oaks for public use came to a successful conclusion recently - thanks to a generous donation from a Fair Oaks couple and funds from the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors.
“Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan in late December presented the Fair Oaks Recreation and Park District with a $35,000 check, which will be used to help pay off a bank loan the district assumed to secure the other half of the 4.5-acre bluff site at Bridge Street. The county parks department owns half of the property.
“Land developers Gerry and Karen Kamilos of Fair Oaks donated $16,198.13, the remaining balance of the $326,000 loan from American River Bank.
“The bluff property will become part of the 23-mile American River Parkway, under the ownership of the Sacramento County Department of Regional Parks, Recreation and Open Space.
"This is one achievement that the park district has participated in that I am most proud of," district director Tel Labelle said after receiving the money at a special meeting called by the park district. Parkway supporters also attended to celebrate the milestone occasion.
“In December 2003, the park district took over the loan it had co-signed for Citizens to Save the Bluffs, a grass-roots organization that formed to preserve the scenic cliff from private development.
“The group had raised more than $1 million for the site, including the loan, $50,000 in contingency funds from the park district, $100,000 from an anonymous donor and $250,000 from Sacramento County to match a $250,000 donation from the Thomas P. Raley Foundation. Other individual donations ranged from $25 to $5,000, according to a county news release.
“But Tracy Martin Shearer and Marty Maskall, members of the grass-roots group, said they had encountered fundraising fatigue in the community, and they were unable to pay the $175,000 balance by a February 2004 deadline. The park district has since been struggling to pay the debt, using $55,000 from the recent sale of surplus land to Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church."
