MOSES LAKE - The Moses Lake Irrigation and Rehabilitation District Board of Commissioners approved a $1.7 million budget at their board meeting last week for 2012.

The budget is approximately $300,000 more than the original 2012 budget the board passed in December of last year.

Three major additions to the budget are equipment costs, the cost of a mobile home at Connelly Park and money for land purchases.

There is $90,000 budgeted for the mobile home, which would house a park ranger, allowing the district to extend the park's hours, said board president Mick Hansen.

Audience member Jennifer Powell, of Moses Lake, questioned whether purchasing the trailer was compatible with the board's goal of saving money and focusing on priorities.

"I don't get where the mobile home and the land purchase come into that priority agenda of saving money for the district," she said.

Hansen said they are talking about having a park ranger staff the park, "which will be 24 hours a day, hopefully seven days a week," said Hansen. "I can't guarantee they'll be there seven days a week, but nevertheless, it should make somebody there, make it to where we can keep that park open. It's not only the saving money part of it, it's the fact that it should make a big difference in how many hours we can operate that park."

The district currently employs two employees to take care of Connelly Park and employs a nighttime security employee, Hansen told the Columbia Basin Herald. Consolidating those positions into one live-in park ranger would save the district money, he said.

"My feeling is we have somebody living there like a park ranger ... He'd be paid probably somewhere around $1,100 to $1,200 a month just to compensate him for any work that he might be doing there," he said. "And I think that you start adding this up, in about two years you're going to find where that mobile home's going to pay for itself really fast, in having a park ranger there versus two young guys hired to keep an eye on it. It should make it to where we can open that park up a lot earlier in the spring and keep it open a lot later in the fall without having any additional cost."

In addition to being responsible for security at the park, the ranger may be responsible for other tasks such as maintaining the rest rooms or mowing the lawn, added Hansen.

Extending the hours at Connelly Park was one of the benefits of hiring a park ranger Hansen brought up at the board meeting.

"That's certainly one of the main complaints, is the fact that (the park) shuts down early in the year," he said. "It opens kind of late in the year here as far as a lot of people are concerned, as far as fishing and everything."

"What are you going to do with this ranger for the four or five months that the park's closed?" asked board director Ron Covey.

"He gets some time off and he can still live there," said Hansen, who added, "He'll probably be paid year-round based on whatever a yearly average would be."

The budget includes $105,000 for a down payment to purchase land.

"We're looking at moving out of the location we are in now at the office, and trying to get some location that's fairly close to the majority of the people and likewise big enough that we can put our own shop and have our headquarters right there on the lake," said Hansen.

The district went through a public input process a couple years ago to study what the public would like to see at Connelly Park, said administrative assistant Julie Smith. That public input included a proposal for an office and shop at a future date when funding was available, she said. The district currently owns approximately 126 acres of land at Connelly Park, she said.

The budget includes $170,000 for equipment, including excavating equipment to remove sediment from the lake, said Hansen.

"The money's going to go for equipment rental when we start working on the (dry land) and that's probably going to be pretty much hiring contractors to come in and do the job then and our own people will probably not be involved with it very much."

While the district currently has permits to operate a hydraulic dredge, the excavation equipment called for in the budget requires different permits, said general manager Curt Carpenter.

"The current permitted project that we have is a hydraulic dredge," he said. "It's a suction dredge that is done during times when the water is up and we have specific months that we can work within for environmental reasons. The proposed mechanical dredging would be front-end-loader-type work when the water level's down and the equipment would be excavating out in the lake ... It's starting a whole new dredge permit."

The district was able to get permission to use their hydraulic dredge without going through the Army Corps of Engineers permit process, but "this mechanical type of dredging will require supervision and permitting of Army Corps of Engineers," said Carpenter.

Hansen has met with representatives of the Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Fish and Wildlife, state Department of Ecology, Grant County Health District, and the City of Moses Lake to discuss the permitting process, he said. He hopes to have the permits within the year, he said.

"That's an optimistic hope," he said. "We're going to be lucky if it happens ... We haven't had anybody that's totally objected to it as far as any of the agencies, and so I would expect that it's more a matter of doing all the red tape and all of the process."