SCORP

The State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Planning (SCORP) document is developed to help decision-makers better understand recreation issues statewide and to maintain Washington’s eligibility for federal Land and Water Conservation Fund dollars.

State government invests tens of millions of dollars each budget in outdoor recreation, from the purchase of park land to the development of playgrounds and ball fields to staff salaries for campground managers. To date, there has been no satisfactory way to measure the effectiveness of the state’s investment.  This issue is the major topic in RCO’s most recent State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Planning (SCORP) document, Defining and Measuring Success: The Role of State Government in Outdoor Recreation.

In SCORP, RCO published an initial approach to measuring the state’s investment in recreation and then completed a statewide test of the proposal. This test report recommends changing the level of service tool to adapt to local conditions. RCO is working to incorporate the lessons learned from the test into guidance for planners. The guidance is in the form of recommendations, not requirements, for park and recreation plans.