Even in unpinched economic times, a parks system has to scratch hard for funding. Recreation and the maintenance of park land can be seen as luxuries rather than necessities and can face stiff competition for taxpayer dollars.

Officials of the Lake County Parks Department saw that writing on the wall in the 1970s and moved toward reliance on a system of user fees that today has the system flourishing despite hard times.

The system is hauling in state accolades, while gearing up for the debut of a major new offering, even as it tightens its belt under an 11 percent budget cut.

For calendar year 2009, the parks anted up almost $1 million of the $15 million in cuts to the county budget enacted by the Lake County Council. The parks board reduced its budget from $8 million to about $7 million, Parks Superintendent Robert Nickovich said.

To achieve those savings, the system cut seven full-time positions, many part-time hours and plans for land acquisitions.

To save money at Wihala Beach, the park is looking at starting lifeguards later in the season, employing them for fewer hours each day and reducing the stretch of beach that is guarded.

But the mainstay of maintaining a trim budget has been the use of pay-as-you-go user fees, Nickovich said. The idea is that those not interested in golf or water parks, for example, are not obligated to subsidize them through property tax dollars.

The challenge is to develop a system of parks during times when competition for tax dollars is so keen, Nickovich said.

And the Lake County Parks approach appears to be working.

The Indiana Park & Recreation Association earlier this year recognized the system with the 2008 Outstanding Park Program award for the annual offering of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the Outstanding Special Award for the wheelchair-accessible hayride at Oak Ridge Prairie County Park in Griffith.

For his efforts, Nickovich was named the Professional of the Year. But he deflects the accolades, instead crediting the department's 80 employees and the park board.

The system maintains three distinct types of offerings: sites of historical or cultural significance, community center-like recreation and outdoor natural experiences. The region's mixed industrial and agricultural heritages are preserved in the county's parks, Nickovich said.

"We do something for everybody," he said. "Each site is unique."

Starting with Lemon Lake in 1972, the system has grown to 12 parks. A vision plan has identified 43 sites as current and potential locations for county parks.

The newest offering, targeted for a July opening, is Bellaboo's, a 24,000-square-foot indoor children's play facility at Three Rivers County Park.

Bellaboo's will be an example of a revenue-generating venue that covers its operating costs and that of others without the capability, such as hiking and nature reserve areas, Nickovich said.

The system draws 60 percent of its operating budget from tax levies, while funding the rest from fees. The use of fees for operating costs has allowed the system to direct more of its scarce county funding to land acquisition, which is generally done in conjunction with two to four partners.

But with land costs around $10,000 per acre, adding to the system is not in the cards for the time being.

"It's been difficult for us to continue developing the system" and complete the vision plan, Nickovich said. Multimillion-dollar bond issues to purchase park land are not likely to be politically viable for some time, he said.

The park board, formed in 1968, was established "50 years too late," according to Nickovich. With that kind of head start, the park system could have worked for land acquisitions that would have broken up the urban sprawl across the county.

Now, as one town blends imperceptibly into the next, it is increasingly difficult to locate land that can be preserved as green space. Had the system been started earlier, he said, ecosystems, rather than remnants and pieces, could have been part of the system today.