To the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors,

I am writing as a Sebastopol father of two young kids and a regular pass holder who, more times than I can count, has driven to Ragle Ranch with the wrong car. That small frustration is what prompted this letter.

As you weigh the path to renewing Parks for All (Measure M), I want to offer one small idea that fits squarely inside the case you will be making to voters: that Sonoma County Regional Parks is a careful steward of every dollar, and that the system serves households, not just individuals.

The proposal is simple. When a resident purchases a $69 annual park pass online, offer a discounted second-vehicle hang tag, priced between $5 and $10, as a one-click add-on. Limit it to one per transaction. Exclude it from the $49 senior pass. Run it as a one-year pilot.

Here is why it fits the renewal moment.

It tells the right story to voters. Renewal campaigns succeed when residents trust that the agency is using existing tools well before asking for more. A small operational change that generates new earned revenue at near-zero incremental cost is exactly the kind of evidence the renewal narrative wants on its side.

It honors the "Parks for All" ethos. The current pricing structure treats households as vehicles. A family with two cars pays $138 for the same access that a one-car household gets for $69. A discounted second pass corrects that. Parks for All should mean parks for households.

It captures revenue currently walking out the gate. The California Legislative Analyst's Office has documented that roughly two-thirds of park visitors statewide do not pay day-use fees (LAO, 2017), often because they park outside the gate and walk in. Many of those visitors would buy in if the household math worked. A second-pass option converts irregular fee avoiders into reliable annual contributors.

It is a proven model elsewhere. Wisconsin offers a $15.50 add-on alongside its $28 pass. Colorado's Aspen Leaf Multiple Pass and Texas's secondary household pass do the same. These programs have run for years and continue to expand, which is the strongest available signal that they generate net revenue.

The economics are favorable. The marginal cost of a printed hang tag is near zero. Bundling research from MIT and Wharton finds that low-marginal-cost add-ons priced at 10 to 15 percent of the primary purchase convert at high rates, because the buyer has already committed. A $5 to $10 add-on on a $69 pass sits exactly in that range. If Regional Parks sells 5,000 annual passes a year and one in five buyers adds a second pass at $7.50, that is roughly $7,500 in new annual revenue with no new marketing spend, plus any new primary passes the option pulls in.

I am aware of the natural concern that two friends could split a $76.50 pair instead of buying two separate passes. In practice, that is unlikely at scale, because passes have rolling expiration dates and splitting means paying for months of overlapping coverage one party already has. And in the world where two people who otherwise paid nothing now contribute $76.50, the county still comes out ahead. Wisconsin, Colorado, and Texas have effectively run that experiment for years and kept their programs in place.

Renewal campaigns are won on trust, and trust is built by visible signs that an agency is making the most of what it already has. A second-vehicle pilot is small enough to test cheaply, big enough to tell a real story, and aligned with the values the renewal will be asking the public to fund for another decade.

Would the Board consider directing Regional Parks staff to evaluate a one-year second-vehicle pass pilot as part of the broader Measure M renewal strategy?

Respectfully,
Andrew Meyer
Sebastopol resident and annual pass holder