Stanislaus County Parks and Recreation Department

 My family and I love this great park. Full hookup campgrounds, free showers with HOT water, very clean facilities!! We whole heartedly support this grant. They have made many strides over the last few years including new concrete tables at the all of the campsites, naming and marking trails, and recently constructed a new water treatment facility to start providing drinking water again. Our group rents their Rec Hall atleast once a year and I saw that it was recently painted inside and out. After talking with the Ranger there he stated that they were going to replace the old BBQ pits behind the Hall with two new ones that were from the same company as the concrete tables and that they would add side/serving tables next to them. He even showed me some pictures of ones they just installed at another park and they looked great.  These old BBQ's have been great for the last 30 or so years but they are cracking and even with the repairs made to them they are just due to be replaced. I did not see these in the grant request and I am not sure why, they would be an excellent addition to the Rec Hall that is used by so many clubs and groups, I heard they even had a wedding there!! Brett Turner - 4/7/14

 Frank Raines is a great park, not that big but plenty of varying terrain. Our club puts on an event here normally once a year, but I come here with my family maybe every other month. This park is very family friendly and has many of the amenities you need when having young ones in tow.

Our group has assisted with trail repair on a number of occasions and what has always bothered us is the lack of equipment this park owns compared to other parks. I think they only have a small old dozer and an equally small front loader with a scraper. We have offered to bring in equipment but there always seems to be an issue with insurance either on the Park’s side or on our side if we try to get a company to donate equipment hours. This park really needs additional equipment to perform trail maintenance as the weather allows, like after most rains.

While we understand renting vs buying something like a D6 dozer makes sense when it comes to dollars spent,  it also makes getting the repair work done when needed very difficult to time. We believe other smaller pieces of equipment like a small excavator and dump truck would be well worth the money spent and could be used nearly all year and throughout the park for moving materials.

Please consider adding some pieces of equipment like this to this park to help improve the park, from the campground to trail repair. We will continue to support this wonderful family park and we hope you will too.

Thank you for your time and consideration. M. Newlin - 4/7/14