Dear HCN,
“Shrink To Fit” (HCN,
11/12/94), about downsizing the Park Service, hit me where I used
to live. Almost 40 years ago I began a Park Service career as a
laborer on a trail maintenance crew at Many Glacier. Two months ago
I was one of the 425 who took the “buyout” and
retired.
Karl Hess has some excellent points, and
the best may be that a Park Service run from an increasing number
of regional power bases is not a step in the right
direction.
The Service’s Organic Act states that
the agency will preserve the parks and keep them unimpaired for
future generations, and provide for use. The agency may have met
the mandate while managing through regional offices and “service
centers’ with hundreds of very highly paid employees. Now it is
going to set the stage to increase those central office numbers by
hundreds more.
The Park Service is going to
increase the raw resources allocated to central offices – money,
personnel – at the expense of the parks. I seriously doubt there
will be any delegation of authority to park superintendents. In
fact, it is most likely to go the other way.
To
date, power and money have been the dominion of the Washington and
regional offices. Now those very power bases have been asked to
downsize themselves – not to reform the way business has been done,
so a reorganization is under way which sets the stage for even less
resources in the parks (fewer rangers, more deteriorating
facilities, etc.), and a bigger central office operation. Those
slimmer field offices won’t stay slim for long, because that just
isn’t the way bureaucracies work.
What can be
done? Give national park superintendents all the support you can.
Get involved with that local park staff and let them know what you
think needs doing. If you don’t like some program let the staff
know, and let your congressional delegation know. Raise a little
hell, demand accountability and insist on pushing what little money
there is to the parks, not to those central
offices.
Peter Thompson
Hobart,
Washington
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Park Service can’t reform itself.
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