David Vincent, California State Parks

David Vincent has been the District Superintendent of Santa Cruz area State Parks for the entire time that I have been living in Santa Cruz and involved in bike advocacy. Dave is retiring at the end of this month and it represents the end of his 32 year career at State Parks. I remember meeting David Vincent at a Coast Dairies public meeting back in 2003 and he seemed like a great listener. More recently, I have been meeting with him and talking to him on the phone about mountain bike access issues and he is always fair and reasonable in his dealings with user groups.

The old timers in MBOSC gave me a couple of nice anecdotes about Dave Vincent:

Dave was introduced to MBOSC on the first week of the job. Grey Whale was about to be opened and there was a problem with the fire road known as "Woodcutters". It needed repair otherwise it would not be approved as an "open trail" by the California Coastal Commission. Dave authorized Bob Culberson and MBOSC crew that Saturday to go in and fix all of the problems on Woodcutters before the approval the following week by the Coastal Commission. Thanks to Dave we got it opened!

Dave has always been a proponent of one trail-multi use. This concept has driven his support of continuing mulit-use trails in Wilder. He used to say: "There just is not enough land to support two trail systems". He has always appreciated the support that the mountain biking community has done over the years to develop and maintain the local trails.

This State Parks district has the most public land out of any land management agency in Santa Cruz county. There are a lot of people in Santa Cruz who are passionate about the environment. Dave had a pretty tough job as the District Superintendent and he was always in the cross hairs of mountain bikers, environmentalists and dog walkers. Everyone wanted something from State Parks and Dave was the one they went to. Dave had a tough job balancing the needs for recreational access and resource protection. He has to weigh all of these competing influences and do it with budgets which have been sliced to pieces in the past decade.

MBOSC would like to thank Dave for his many years of service to Santa Cruz County and managing our amazing public parks. We wish Dave Vincent the best of luck in his future endeavors. Thanks Dave for all your great work!