LOGANSPORT — Gary Smith made clear he wasn’t a fan of the budget the Cass County Parks and Recreation Board found itself approving at Thursday night’s meeting.

Approval, he said, might not be the right word.

“Accept reluctantly might be more like it,” he said.

After losing more than 20 percent of the France Park operating budget a year ago, the board found itself making another cut of more than 25 percent. The cuts over two years will take the park from a budget of nearly $500,000 a year ago to a budget of less than $290,000 in 2012.

Smith, the board president, did not try to hide his frustration.

“I think they put us on life support,” he said of the county council.

“And that’s really unfortunate because we’ve already been working with baling wire.”

Sandy Heckard, the park superintendent, said the new budget would mean the loss of a full-time security guard.

“I don’t want to cut a full-timer, but I don’t see another way around it,”

she said.

Heckard said she had already spoken to the affected employee, who will lose his full-time job and insurance benefits at the end of the year. She said she planned to bring him back for a maximum of 28 hours a week during the park’s peak season from April through November. As part of the deal, she said, the security guard will get a slight raise, from $8.40 an hour to $10 an hour.

“That’s not much in exchange for the loss of health insurance,”

Smith said.

At the same time, the park will lose some of the temporary help it has traditionally brought in during the summer.

“We won’t be able to bring back the naturalist,” Heckard said.

The park will also rely more heavily on volunteers.

“We’ll need them to operate the concession stand, the mini golf course and for maintenance,” Heckard said.

Board member Tamara Ogle, the county agricultural Extension agent, noted that the park wasn’t alone with its tight budget.

“I’m as upset about this as you are, but it’s part of the times,” she told Smith. “Everybody is being asked to make cuts.”

She noted after the meeting that a committee of board members had taken a hard look at the budget.

“We took a lot of time to look at what we could cut to save money without hurting services,” she said, “and I think we accomplished that.”

Heckard told board members that the county council had made one additional cut.

“They cut your pay,” she said.

Board members had been collecting a $40 monthly stipend.

“Did they cut their own pay?” Smith asked.

Heckard responded that the council had considered such a cut, but the motion failed.

“You lead by example,” Smith said after the meeting.

Heckard noted that, for the most part, the council allowed each department to make its own decisions about where to trim.

“They said they didn’t want to micromanage, and I appreciate that,”

she said.

The meeting drew a small crowd, many of them individuals who use the park for camping. Some were concerned about another item on Thursday’s agenda, the establishment of fees for 2012.

“In light of what you just did with the budget, this is something we need to look at,” Heckard said. “We’ve got to bring in more revenue somehow.”

The board made no decisions on that issue Thursday, but it did agree to assemble a committee that would study the matter and offer a recommendation. Heckard said she hoped to present the recommendation at next month’s meeting so that the board could approve it in November and have the new fees in place by January.

Board member Dennis Ide noted that higher fees wouldn’t necessarily generate more revenue.

“If the fees get too high, we could hurt ourselves that way as well,” he said.

Smith told the audience the board would persevere.

“We’ll come begging if we have to,” he said. “We might need your help, but we want to keep the place open.”

• Kelly Hawes is managing editor of the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached at 574-732-5155 or kelly.hawes@pharostribune.com.